Christopher ''Kit'' Wood (1901-1930) studied medicine, then architecture before setting out to become (as he wrote to his mother, aged twenty) "the greatest painter that ever lived".

In Paris he met Picasso and the writer and film-maker Jean Cocteau, who in turn introduced him to Sergei Diaghilev the director of the Modernist dance company the Russian Ballet. Wood successfully competed against experienced artists including Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis to design stage sets for Diaghilev's Romeo and Juliet, directed by Cocteau and composed by Constant Lambert.

The Bather shares the sculptural monumentality of Picasso’s figures from Greek mythology. It is very close in design to a nude portrait of Lambert from the same year.