Young Girl Lying in the Grass

By the early 1890s Renoir had come out the far side of a difficult decade. In the mid-1880s he had decided Impressionism was leading him into a dead end, and he went back to study Ingres and the Renaissance masters, tightening his drawing until the work turned dry and cool. This painting belongs to the loosening that followed. A young woman lies in deep grass, her skin warm against the green, drawn softly again yet resting on the firm sense of form he had drilled into himself. Through the 1890s he settled into this warmer manner for good. The flesh is set down in those pearly reds and creams that run through the last long stretch of his work.