Paul Cézanne | The Fishermen (Fantastic scene), 1875

"The Fishermen" (Fantastic scene) is an Impressionist oil on canvas painting created by Paul Cézanne in 1875.

It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

The critic Georges Rivière admired this painting at the 1877 Impressionist exhibition, writing:

"It is strikingly majestic and extraordinarily calm.

It seems that the scene takes place in [Cézanne's] memory while he turns the pages of his life".

The composite image of fishermen and elegantly attired strollers along a sunlit shore derives from paintings of outdoor leisure by Manet and Monet from the 1860s, and harkens back to pastoral prototypes that Cézanne admired in the work of the Venetian painters Giorgione, Titian and Veronese. | The Metropolitan Museum of Art