The Philadelphia Museum of Art is privileged to own seven nudes by Renoir (four paintings and three bronze sculptures), including the picture that he called his masterwork, The Great Bathers of 1884-87 in the Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., Collection.¹ Fond of female subjects and determined to continue what he saw as an important academic tradition, Renoir returned to painting nudes late in his career. Inspired by Titian and Peter Paul Rubens, who had also painted monumental female nudes, Renoir's late nudes are healthy, mature women with ample flesh and a timeless, classical quality. From 1903 to 1905, Renoir painted four voluptuous nudes in closely related vertical compositions. This one lacks any suggestion of a setting, as the background is an indistinct haze of green, brown, and yellow. Free of the clothing and straw hat that rest beside her, the bather exemplifies a state of being untethered by time or narrative. The sinuous, winding folds of her flesh are created of luminous layers of paint, and the figure is so softly modeled that the edges of her skin seem to melt into the background. In a rare gesture of self-display, she lifts her hair from her face, acknowledging us and inviting us to gaze upon her body. Jennifer A. Thompson, from Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art (2007), p. 84.

Note:
1) Christopher Riopelle, Renoir: The Great Bathers, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 86, nos. 367-68 (Fall 1990), p. 6.