Cézanne made only eight prints throughout his career. He initially experimented with etching in 1873, alongside his Impressionist peers Camille Pissarro and Armand Guillaumin. In 1895, art dealer Ambroise Vollard, spurred by the success of an exhibition of Cézanne’s work at his gallery in Paris, encouraged the painter to take up lithography. This print, The Bathers, large plate (Les baigneurs, grand planche) was commissioned by Vollard for an unrealized album of prints by contemporary artists. Cézanne first created the lithograph in black, then added color. The composition of the lithograph is based on an oil painting of ca. 1876–1877 titled Bathers at Rest (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), exhibited at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. It depicts four male figures in an open landscape. Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain in southern France, appears in the background.