Like Cézanne, Tennent has flattened and simplified the entire pictorial space. Two bathers, a man (left) and semi-nude woman (right), press into the foreground; while the man reclines on his right arm, the woman tilts her head as if to wring water out of her hair. The other two figures, situated in the middleground and background, lie in pretzel-like repose. From a tree in the distant right sprout abstracted leaves that frame the upper register, which serve to locate the otherwise ambiguous scene outdoors (and are, incidentally, a very rare instance of Tennent’s including any sort of foliage or nature imagery in her work).

It is a compelling composition, built up with intersecting, triangular shapes that pull the eye deeper into the scene — an effect achieved through curving, rather than rigidly geometric, lines. (This quality distinguishes Tennent’s work from that of her friend and contemporary, Juliette May Fraser, who favored sharp angles.) The anatomical distortions evident here forecast the rolling bodily forms that would soon become synonymous with the “Madge Tennent aesthetic.”