Description
After the Bath – a body with no contour, held together by difference of colour alone
| Year of creation: | 1910 |
| Original size: | 75.2 cm x 94.5 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia |
After the Bath is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1910. The original measures 75.2 cm x 94.5 cm, is recorded under inventory number BF142 and is held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Our oil painting on canvas After the Bath is worked by hand, in eight upright sizes from 65 x 80 to 140 x 170 cm.
The white towel and the flowering greenery
The blonde nude sits holding a white towel in both hands, her head tilted towards her right shoulder and her eyes lowered. Behind her, flowering greenery opens to the left and soft pale cloth to the right; a reddish drapery lies at the lower left. The signature and date “Renoir. 1910” are painted in the lower left corner.
Why hand-painted, not a print
Our version is not a print. This is a late work from Cagnes, and the body is built from warm reddish and orange tones that pass into one another without a hard contour – what holds the figure together is difference of colour alone. An oil painting on canvas After the Bath made by hand keeps that passage; print breaks it into separate dots and the transition is lost.
In the room
The colours are warm and the scene is closed and set near the viewer, so the canvas does best where it can be seen from a short distance: in a bedroom, beside a reading corner, on a short wall between a door and a wardrobe. Because there is no contour, the transitions only read from close to – from the far side of a room the body merges into the background and the painting loses the very thing it was made for. The reddish drapery at the lower left sits well with warm wood and a white or cream wall. For a room like that we recommend 90 x 110 cm, for a longer wall 120 x 150 cm, and for a large bedroom wall 140 x 170 cm.
What you receive
We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. After the Bath arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.
- Subject: seated blonde nude holding a white towel before flowering greenery, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
- Sizes: 8 sizes, from 65 x 80 cm to 140 x 170 cm, another size on request
- Detail worth knowing: a late work painted at Cagnes; the signature and date stand, unusually, in the lower left corner of the canvas
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