Renoir, Pierre-Auguste (1841-1919)
Baigneuse assise (Seated Bather)
c.1883–1884
Oil on canvas, 119.7 x 93 cm
Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA
Following a trip to Italy in 1881–82 to study the masterpieces of ancient Roman and Renaissance painting, Renoir embarked on one of his most innovative periods. As he later recalled, “Around 1883 there occurred what seemed to be a break in my work. I had wrung impressionism dry.” Exploring the canonical theme of female nude bathers, Renoir titled a work similar to this one Naiad, or water nymph, highlighting the figure’s classical inspiration. Her pose recalls a well-known Roman sculpture of a bathing nymph; it also evokes a long tradition in painting of depicting nude figures in a landscape. While this work responds to these precedents, it also breaks with them. Renoir painted the figure and her drapery differently from the landscape, so that she appears to float in the setting. He also left her right foot unresolved where it meets the fabric, signaling that his pictorial approach was no longer a purely naturalistic enterprise. (Fogg)