Long-haired bather

In the 1890s Renoir turned away from the modern Paris he had painted as a young Impressionist and settled into a warmer, older subject, the bather by the water, a figure who could belong to almost any century. This one dates from around 1895, in what collectors later called his pearly period, after the soft iridescent light he gave to skin. Her loosened hair and the leaves behind her are worked in the same shimmering touch, so the body and the riverbank seem to ripple together. Renoir was in his mid-fifties and beginning to feel the arthritis that would slowly lock his hands. He painted a nearly identical bather the same year, now in the Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia, differing mostly in how much of the discarded clothing you can see.