La Toilette

By 1907 Renoir had left Paris for the warmth of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, driven south by a rheumatoid arthritis that was slowly locking his hands. He went on painting anyway, at times with the brush wedged between stiffened fingers. The nudes of these years, like this woman at her toilette, turn away from modern city life toward something older and warmer, full-bodied figures in soft light that he tied back to the Renaissance painters he loved. The skin is flushed with reds and the outlines kept loose. Work like this came from a house he built among olive trees, where he stayed until his death in 1919.