Bather (Baigneuse)

1918

Oil on canvas

31.2 × 24.1 cm (12.3 × 9.5 in)

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● On view now — Collection Gallery, Room 07, West Wall

Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia · verified July 2026

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FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

A nude sits in a lush grove dotted with flowers in this rapidly brushed image, which Renoir painted near the end of his life. Unlike his early Bather (c. 1875), at the center of this gallery wall, this late nude issues from the realm of fantasy—the fantasy of a female body whose sensuality is natural and unthreatening. Renoir reinforced this idea in the pictorial structure, rhyming the figure's bodily contours with the curves of the foliage and repeating the pinks of her flesh in the flowers.

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