Femme nue couchée

By the time Renoir painted this, around 1906, he was in his sixties and living in the south of France, his hands so twisted by arthritis that a brush sometimes had to be wedged between his fingers. None of that struggle shows here. A young woman lies back on a white sheet against a green wall, a flower in her hair, her skin worked in warm pinks and creamy whites. She is Gabrielle Renard, a cousin of Renoir's wife who had come to look after the children and became his favourite model for years. He made several reclining figures like this in his last decade, turning away from city subjects toward warm bodies, fruit and sunlight. The pose goes straight back to the reclining Venuses of the old Venetian painting he loved.