David Park was a pioneer in the San Francisco Abstract Expressionist movement, and an influential teacher at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute). In late 1949 or early 1950, Park famously took all his nonobjective paintings to the Berkeley city dump. This radical gesture, along with Park’s exhibition of the representational work "Kids on Bikes" (1950) at the San Francisco Art Association Annual in 1951, came to symbolize the perceived break between the Bay Area’s Abstract Expressionist and Figurative artists.

Park’s figurative subjects infused his work with a new humanism, while retaining the Abstract Expressionists’ bold brushstrokes, rich paint surfaces, and emphasis of the two-dimensional picture plane. Inspired by mythological and biblical precedents, as well as similar subjects by Paul Cézanne, Park’s bather subjects offer a timeless meditation on the elemental relationship of human beings to nature.