Nu

By 1910 Renoir was almost 70 and badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. His hands were so deformed that assistants had to wedge the brush between his stiffened fingers, and he worked seated, unable to stand for long. None of that shows here. The nude reclines in warm garden light, her skin flushed pink and gold, the whole surface soft and unhurried. In these last years he had turned almost entirely to bathers and full, rounded figures like this one, painting a warmth his own joints could no longer feel. The picture was bought in Paris in the 1930s for the National Museum in Belgrade, where it still hangs.