Painted in the same year as La Malade, Bathers on a summer evening illustrates Vallotton's shift from realism to something altogether more symbolic and decorative. In a strangely flattened composition, contemporary women (recognizable as such through their hairstyles and facial expressions) in various stages of undress bathe in, or disrobe beside, a pool. Vallotton flaunts the rules of perspective here: the ploughed lines of the distant fields follow convention by moving towards a vanishing point, while figures of differing sizes appear as if they have been arranged and collaged onto the background; disconnected, seemingly, from their surroundings and from each other. The treatment of some of the women is reminiscent of Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, and, in the erotic and decorative line drawings, the paintings of Klimt and Schiele. The style in which each of the women is rendered differs too. Some are naturalistically shaped and shaded; others almost encased in white rectangular robes, like pillars rising out of the water. Art historians Dita Amory and Ann Dumas said of this piece that "Its cold eroticism laid the foundations for Vallotton's entire later exploration of the Female nude".

Of all the works Vallotton created during his association with Les Nabis, Bathers on a summer evening was probably the most controversial, even causing a minor scandal when it was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1893. Seen in the context of his earlier satirical works, the painting can be read as an ironic take on fin-de-siècle society and as a caricature of bourgeois leisure pursuits. Vallotton's variation on the theme of "the fountain of life" also provoked bemusement among the critics and public who failed to respond to its originality or to recognize the subtle references to the likes of Rousseau and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. On viewing the work, Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the few to appreciate it, but even he predicted that the police were likely to "come and take it away".

Félix Édouard Vallotton (1865 – 1925) was a Swiss and French painter and printmaker associated with the group of artists known as Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut. He painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in an unemotional, realistic style.

Available as a fine art print and as a stretched canvas panel (heavy fine art canvas stretched over 1.5 inch deep edge solid wood frame).