Baigneuse

In the early 1890s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir proclaimed that “in literature as well as in painting, talent is shown only by the treatment of the feminine figure” (quoted in Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 16). While Renoir had occasionally depicted the female nude during the early years of his career, it was not until his return from a tour of Italy in 1881 that it became the principal focus of his art, inspired by his direct experiences of the paintings of the Italian Renaissance and the ancient frescoes of Pompeii. Struck by the informal grace and beauty of these images, but also by the sense of monumentality with which they were often imbued, Renoir turned to the subject of the nude female figure with renewed vigor. Painted in 1891, Baigneuse is a sumptuous example of the artist’s evolving approach to the theme through the ensuing years. Depicting an elegant young woman in a bucolic outdoor setting, Renoir reinterprets the timeless subject through a distinctly modern, Impressionist lens, filling the canvas with the soft, nuanced fall of natural light on bare skin.

This was a vital period of artistic reassessment and renewal for Renoir. In 1887, he had exhibited Les grandes baigneuses (Dauberville, no. 1292; The Philadelphia Art Museum), a statement piece which showcased the hard-edged, Ingres-inspired manner of painting that the artist had painstakingly cultivated across the middle of the decade. Confident that he had brought this linear style to its pinnacle—and simultaneously disheartened that this monumental painting, on which he had invested so much time and effort, was met with a largely hostile response from critics and contemporaries—Renoir embarked on a different direction in his art making. “I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style,” he wrote to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, in 1888, “soft and light of touch” (quoted in M. Lucy and J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121). This deliberate shift in Renoir’s painterly technique can be felt in the present Baigneuse—eschewing the crisp linearity and cool, polished surfaces of Les grandes baigneuses, he instead employs a nuanced, painterly touch throughout the canvas, capturing the scene in soft layers of flickering brushwork.

In Baigneuse, Renoir focuses on a young female bather as she rests on a rock at the edge of a small stream or pond, the verdant growth of the surrounding woodland and vegetation seeming to almost engulf her. Long grasses and reeds hug the banks of the undulating stretch of water, while a screen of thick, towering trees behind the woman create a naturally secluded bathing spot. There is an inherent tranquility to the scene, accentuated by the model’s relaxed, unselfconscious demeanor as she gazes off into the distance, unafraid of being discovered in her state of undress. The naturalness of the scene reflects the artist’s extensive experience with painting en plein air, which allowed him to convey the fleeting passage of diffused light as it shifts over her form. The surface of her skin is rendered in a lively play of subtly variegated color, from creamy peach tones and blush pinks, to soft lavenders and cool blues, which intertwine and overlap in a carefully orchestrated network of delicately layered brushstrokes that articulate the volumes of her body.

While Renoir invokes the classical traditions of the female bather in a landscape in this work—simultaneously referencing the work of Titian, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Gustave Courbet in different ways—his approach to his protagonist is thoroughly modern, avoiding any mythological or literary references or narrative pretext for the scene. There is a richly sensual impression of observation and immediacy in his depiction of her form, casting her as a real woman rather than an abstract idealization, while her simple gold bangle and fashionable chignon stand as tokens of everyday life, positioning her as a contemporary character. “I like painting best when it looks eternal without boasting about it,” Renoir later explained to his son, “an everyday eternity” (quoted in J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, Boston, 1958, p. 233).

Renoir’s brushwork brings an incredible sense of vibrancy and vitality to the picture. As art historian Tamar Garb has noted: “In Renoir’s images of the nude, the very painterliness of his technique... fuses the body of woman with the vegetation that surrounds her. The female body dissolves into the landscape, becoming yet another natural phenomenon in a natural paradise” (“Renoir and the Natural Woman” in Oxford Art Journal, vol. viii, no. 2, 1985, pp. 6-7). In Baigneuse, this symbiotic relationship between the woman and her surroundings is heightened by Renoir’s harmonizing color palette, in which the russet tones of the protagonist’s hair correspond to the warm hues that punctuate the variegated greens in the tree canopy and grasses. Viewed in profile, seemingly unaware of the viewer, she embodies Renoir’s ideal of woman as a natural being, in harmony with the earthly paradise of her setting.

Baigneuse was acquired from Renoir shortly after its completion by Paul Durand-Ruel, and was included the following year in a large retrospective exhibition dedicated to the artist, staged at the Galeries Durand-Ruel et Cie in May 1892. This was a triumphal, watershed moment in Renoir’s mature career, earning him widespread critical acclaim that elevated him to a new level of renown. In his review of the show, the poet and critic Albert Aurier noted that in his latest compositions, Renoir appeared to be embarking upon a different path, going beyond mere appearances in his pursuit of the ideal of le joli (quoted in M. Lucy and J. House, op. cit., 2012, p. 133). The painting remained in the Durand-Ruel family for almost sixty years, and appeared in a number of important exhibitions in Paris through the opening decades of the twentieth century, cementing Renoir’s legacy with a new generation of young, avant-garde artists active in the French capital.