Art: Cezanne, Cezanne

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Les Grandes Baigneuses has 14 figures in the foreground, composed in a pattern which strengthens and connects the pattern of tree trunks arching above them. The trunks on the left are slenderer and soar at a greater angle than those on the right, thus endangering the balance of the picture. It is because Cézanne kept his painting in balance despite this powerful asymmetrical movement that visitors to the Pennsylvania Museum last week found Les Grandes Baigneuses as full of an exciting repose as first-rate critics have found it. To most people $10 or $1,000,000 would have been as fair and as meaningless a price for this simple artistic effect as what Mr. Widener paid or what Dr. Barnes did not pay.

*Actually, for about one-sixth.

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