Renoir – Nude in a Landscape

After seeing the old masters firsthand during a trip to Italy in 1881, Renoir began to move away from the Impressionism he had practiced for years and search for a new style. Painted in 1883, this work marks something like the starting point of that shift.

Its subject — a nude figure set in a landscape — was a favorite of eighteenth-century French painters. The background still carries the strong imprint of Impressionist light, a sign that breaking fully from his old technique wasn't something Renoir could do overnight. But the treatment of the female body shows a clear change: the outlines are far more defined than before. He is said to have lamented, while working on this piece, that he could barely draw at all.

Interestingly, Renoir returned to the same theme past the age of seventy, producing a work with an entirely different feel — and it was only then, he reportedly said, that he finally felt he understood painting. That later work, Bather, from 1914, also belongs to the Orangerie's collection; if both are on display, they're well worth viewing side by side.