Die Badenden

Renoir painted this at the very end, in 1918 and 1919, at his farm in the south of France. By then rheumatoid arthritis had crippled his hands so badly that brushes had to be wedged between his swollen fingers, and the large canvas was set on rollers so he could work it seated, turning it rather than moving himself. He said he would not die before giving the best of himself, and treated this as a kind of testament. There is no sign of the war that had just ended, or of his own pain. Instead there are two women stretched in the grass in warm afternoon light, painted in the soft reds and golds he had returned to in old age. He died in December 1919, months after finishing it.