Después del baño

By 1910 Renoir painted in pain. Rheumatoid arthritis had twisted his hands and pinned him to a wheelchair at his house in Cagnes-sur-Mer, in the warm south of France, and assistants would wedge the brush between his stiffened fingers each day. What came out was not bitter at all. These late years gave him warm, ample nudes like this bather, her skin flushed with reds and roses, the whole canvas turned toward comfort and sun. Paul Durand-Ruel, the dealer who had backed the Impressionists for decades, bought it straight from Renoir that October. Five years on it passed to the American collector Albert Barnes, which is why a late Renoir made on a hillside in Provence now hangs just outside Philadelphia.