Yasui Sotaro went to France at nineteen, and, in seven years there, studied everything from Classical to Post-Impressionist art, even visiting Renoir at his atelier in Cagnes. It was Cezanne, however, whom he regarded as most significant. Bathers, painted during his last year in France, was the largest oil painting he produced there and the culmination of his years of study. The subject, nude women bathing, is a traditional one in Western painting and one that Cezanne and Renoir also addressed. He unaffectedly expresses their influence in his rendering of the human figures and background.