Lavery's interest in bathing scenes didn't start until the 1920s, after trips to Monte Carlo and Palm Beach — and when he turned that eye toward London, he found his subject a short drive from his own studio at Cromwell Place. Chiswick Baths had opened in 1910, one of several open-air Edwardian pools built with modern two-tier changing rooms and a diving board tall enough to feel genuinely daring for its time. Mixed bathing was allowed, and London's youth treated the place as much for socialising and showing off the latest fashions as for actual swimming.
Lavery painted this scene in 1929, nineteen years after the baths opened, by which point they'd become a fixture of the summer social calendar. His technique here — the gentle, dabbed brushwork he'd developed decades earlier at the artists' colony of Grez-sur-Loing — suits the subject perfectly: splashes of yellow, green and blue for heat and water, smudges of pink standing in for limbs in a crowded, noisy scene.
The baths closed in 1981. This painting is now one of the clearest visual records left of what that particular kind of carefree, sociable summer actually looked like.
Sizes & Format
40 × 50 cm / 16 × 20″
Available framed (black, white, wood) or unframed
Print & Frame Details
Archival matte paper, 250gsm (110lb), acid-free and FSC-certified — off-white, uncoated. Framed prints: solid oak or ash wood frame, 20mm thick, with shatterproof protective glazing. Ready to hang, hanging kit included. Unframed prints ship flat.
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