Description
A bather sits with one leg drawn up, her hand resting near her ankle, her body turned so we see her back and the curve of her shoulder toward the water. Her dark hair is gathered up, leaving her neck bare, and the whole scene is painted with an unusually soft, almost misted touch, colours melting into one another rather than staying sharply separated.
Held by the Sompo Museum of Art, the canvas (52 by 39.5 cm) shows Renoir’s late fascination with the seated bather pose, worked here in warm flesh tones against a hazy blue-green backdrop suggesting sea and sky. The print is built to preserve that soft, blurred quality deliberately, rather than sharpening the picture into a crispness Renoir never painted.



