Frau, die ihr Haar richtet

By 1887 Renoir had spent several years deliberately unlearning Impressionism. A trip to Italy earlier in the decade had sent him back to Raphael and the old masters, and he had grown unhappy with the soft, dissolving surfaces that first made his name, wanting firmer drawing and clear outlines again. That same year he finished a large, cool composition of nude bathers that puzzled the friends who had loved his warmer work. This woman lifting her arms to gather her hair belongs to that severe stretch, the kind of ordinary private gesture Renoir returned to for decades and treated almost like a piece of classical sculpture. Within a few more years he would loosen again into the warm, pearly nudes of his old age.