Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist on 15th October 1901)
Ch. Hessel, Paris (acquired from the above on 30th December 1929)
Private Collection, France
Thence by descent to the present owner

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Tableaux par A. Renoir, 1902
Munich, Galerie Thannhauser, Renoir, 1912, no. 27

Michel Drucker, Renoir, Paris, 1944, no. 108
Michel Drucker, Renoir, Paris, 1955, no. 94, illustrated
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, Paris, 2009, vol. II, no. 1358, illustrated p. 421; illustrated in colour p. 422

The canvas is lined. Apart from a small area of retouching in the upper left quadrant, with a corresponding repair visible on the reverse, and some scattered old small spots of retouching, visible under ultra-violet light, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the colours are slightly softer and richer in the original.
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Baigneuse allongée de dos avec un chapeau de paille is a superb example of Renoir's mature style, exemplifying his ability to capture the sensuality of the female form. In the 1880s and 1890s, Renoir devoted himself to the creation of an idealised art undisturbed by modernity. The female nude had always figured in his work, but the subject became his central concern from the mid-1880s onwards, when Renoir sought to introduce Arcadian themes and classical precision into his art. Inspired by the works of Raphael which he saw during his visit to Italy in 1881-82, Renoir began to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women. This is sometimes called his 'Ingres period,' and the realism in the nudes from around this time suggests that his return to this theme was also inspired by the French academic tradition.

By the time the present work was painted in the early 1890s, the artist's historical references tended towards Titian and Rubens rather than to Ingres. Indeed, the critic Julius Meier-Graefe referred to Renoir as, 'a son of Delacroix and a grandson of Rubens'. During this period, the nude, more than any other subject, enabled Renoir to unite his personal responsiveness to the physical presence of his models with his keen awareness of his place along the continuum of French painting. As John House noted, '[the] nudes of the 1890s are on the borderline between modernity and timelessness' (J. House in Renoir (exhibition catalogue), The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985, p. 264). Considered amongst Renoir's greatest artistic achievements, the elegant nudes of the 1890s would provide an important source of inspiration for Picasso's neo-classical oils of the same subject nearly three decades later.

Describing Renoir's approach to these nudes, House observed that the artist he was able to 'combine breadth with extreme delicacy of effect [...]. At times he painted very thinly and with much medium over a white priming, particularly in his backgrounds, allowing the tone and texture of the canvas to show through, and creating effects almost like watercolour.  His figures tend to be more thickly painted, but not with single layers of opaque colour; instead fine streaks of varied hue are built up, which create a varied, almost vibrating surface' (ibid., p. 278).