Art Deco Oil on Canvas Painting "Bathers" by Christine Nisbet

An exceptional atmospheric 1930s Art Deco-period oil painting on canvas by the American-born artist Christine Bacheler Nisbet titled "Bathers". The painting presents a group of elegantly stylised female nudes arranged around bathing pool, accompanied by a classical male head that appears as a carved stone statue fragment in the lower right.

The standing figure at centre, draped at her hips in a white towel, a seated nude who raises her arms to her hair and a reclining nude seen from behind. To the rear is a dramatic cascade of orange-red foliage (suggesting a palm or exotic tree) cuts against a muted, luminous sky and fragments of architecture. The male head is rendered with the crisp profile, strong nose, and tightly curled hair typical of Roman or Hellenistic Greek sculpture. Typical of the Art Deco period fascination with antiquity, elegance, and the idealised human form.

Nisbet’s style here is strongly Art Deco in spirit: simplified, elongated bodies, flattened space, refined contours, and a bold yet harmonious colour contrast between the warm flesh tones, cool greys and blues of the water and sky, and the vivid orange of the foliage. The overall effect is highly decorative and mural-like, perfectly suited to a sophisticated Art Deco or modernist interior.

In excellent condition surface clean and stable.

Signed lower left “nisbet”

Dimensions:

Image 70 × 96 cm including

Frame 92.5 × 118.5 × 4.5 cm

Christine Nisbet studied at the Converse Art School and Yale before continuing her training in Paris. She married the writer Captain Ulric Nisbet in 1929 and later settled in England. During the late 1920s and 1930s she produced a number of stylised figure subjects with clear Art Deco affinities (including bathing and allegorical scenes), while also exhibiting at venues such as the Pennsylvania Academy, the Corcoran Gallery, and galleries in London. This canvas belongs to that refined, decorative phase of her work.

The painting has received sympathetic professional restoration and is presented in a substantial period-style frame. It is a strong, ready-to-hang example of Nisbet’s Art Deco-period figurative manner—elegant, sculptural, and richly decorative.

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