Sleeping woman

By the late 1890s Renoir had turned away from the bright café and boating scenes of his Impressionist days toward warm, full-bodied nudes like this dozing bather, painted in 1897. He was 56, and the rheumatism that would slowly cripple his hands had already begun. The soft reds and warm ivory of her skin are where his attention now went. He kept painting women at rest like this until his death in 1919.