Description
A bather crouches low to the ground, red hair falling forward, a thin blue necklace at her throat, gazing down at her own reflection in a strip of water at the lower left. White flowers grow beside her, and her legs stretch out along the grass to the right beneath a wide bank of blue-green foliage.
Painted in 1910 and held by the Barnes Foundation, the wide canvas (65.5 by 81.3 cm) is built around that private moment of self-regard, the composition unusually low and horizontal for a Renoir bather. The print keeps the sliver of reflected water clear at the edge of the canvas, since the whole picture turns on that small mirrored detail.



