Description
A young girl stands at the edge of the water, her body turned slightly away from us so we see her mostly in profile and from the side. Her hair, a warm reddish brown, falls loose to her shoulders. One hand is raised near her collarbone, the other rests on a bunched white cloth at the bottom edge of the canvas, and behind her the setting dissolves into a screen of blue and green with a dark tree trunk cutting up through it to one side.
At the lower left, a patch of water shows through the foliage, streaked with blue and touches of warm orange-yellow that could be reflected light or fallen leaves floating on the surface. The whole background is painted loosely, more a woven texture of color than a described place, greens and blues laid in short, choppy strokes that never resolve into individual leaves or branches.
The figure itself is handled more softly than the setting around her, pale flesh built up in warm pinks and creams with a gentler touch, so she sits forward from the background almost like a cutout laid over a woven tapestry of foliage.
This is a small, intimate picture rather than a grand exhibition piece, closer to a quick, private study of a favorite subject (the standing or seated bather by water) that Renoir painted in dozens of variations over the years. The scale is modest and the touch is fast throughout, more interested in capturing a pose and a patch of dappled light than in finishing every detail.
On a wall, its small scale and dense color make it a picture that rewards being hung where it can be approached closely, the blue-green ground reading as a rich, jewel-toned setting for the one pale figure at its center.
