Modern art takes the best of artists and their art work and adapts it, adding new techniques and personal styles of each. When one carefully analyzes different pieces of art with openness to emotional impression and introspection it allows appreciation and pleasure towards other artists as well as their works. This paper will provide information on the artist Paul Cézanne and his work The Large Bathers, look into Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life) and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It will also discuss the influence Paul Cézanne had on the aforementioned artists upon producing their masterpieces.

Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers, 1906, oil on canvas, 210 x 250.8 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

The Large Bathers is the largest of Cezanne 's pictures and because it is also the most formal in aspect, it has been cited often as an example of his ideal of composition and his restoration of classic monumentality after its lapse during the nineteenth century. Beautiful as it is, the composition is not the typical Renaissance pyramid, for the largest figures and the greatest compactness are in smaller pyramids at the sides; the central part, which is usually filled by a dominant object, is empty or unstressed, and the apex is intercepted by the frame. This powerful suggestive piece has the ability to force the mind into filling in missing details or overlook mistakes or reality. For example, a figure to the front is missing a head. Many assumptions can be made about