Description
A woman lies stretched across a bed or couch, seen entirely from behind, her body running in a long diagonal from lower left to upper right. Her face is hidden, turned toward the pillow, and her long, dark auburn hair falls loose down her back and over one shoulder, ending in a soft curl near the base of her spine. Beneath her, white and pale pink cloth is bunched and rumpled, while a swath of green fabric, perhaps a discarded garment, lies along her side. Behind it all, the background is a warm, unbroken field of ochre and gold.
Renoir paints the back and hips in smooth, blended strokes of pale rose, cream and soft grey shadow, with almost no hard line separating the body from the ochre ground behind it, so the figure seems to glow rather than sit against a backdrop. The hair is handled more loosely, in long reddish-brown strokes that stand out as the single area of dark, saturated color on the canvas. The white sheet beneath her is built from thick, confident strokes of near-pure white, giving the only sharp value contrast in the picture.
Dated 1885, this reclining pose, faceless, seen purely from behind, reflects Renoir’s growing interest at this point in his career in the nude as a study of form and color rather than as portraiture; stripping away the face lets the picture rest entirely on the curve of the back and the warmth of flesh against ochre. The restricted, almost monochrome palette outside the hair and sheet is unusual and gives the canvas a quieter, more abstracted feel than his more colorful bather scenes.
The long diagonal of the body and the warm, enveloping ochre ground make this a picture that reads as a single smooth gesture across the wall, calm and unbroken rather than busy with detail. Its restrained, warm-toned palette makes it easy to place with other work, while the scale and pose of the figure give it quiet, confident presence.
