Three large paintings of this subject exist, the earliest of which is probably the present version. In none of these canvases did Cezanne paint the nude figures from life; instead he used studies he had made many years earlier. In 1904 he explained to a visitor that a narrow, provincial attitude prevented him from having a female model. When this work was shown at the Salon d' Automne in 1907, one year after Cezanne's death, it made a decisive impression on the development of Cubist painting as practiced by Georges Braque and Picasso.
