Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Bathers with a Crab

Bathers with a Crab – four figures on a rocky shore

Bathers with a Crab is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painted around 1890 to 1899. The original measures 65.4 cm x 54.6 cm, is recorded under inventory number 65.30.2 and is held by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Our hand-painted painting Bathers with a Crab is worked in oils on canvas, in eight sizes from 70 x 60 to 150 x 130 cm.

The crab that joins three glances

Four nude figures are spread along a rocky shore. The one at the left sits with her back to the viewer, a white cloth over her legs; the central figure leans on the rock and looks down; the one at the right bends towards a small red crab on the stone, and at the lower right a fourth reclines on red drapery. Blue sea with a low coastline opens behind them, and a slender tree grows at the upper right.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. Renoir tells no mythological story here: the crab is only a small detail that ties together the gaze of three figures. The bodies are painted softly, in pink and cream flesh tones, while rock and grass are laid in with quick short strokes – it is that difference in the speed of the stroke that brings the figures forward, and it is exactly that which print loses, reducing everything to a single density.

In the room

The canvas is almost square, and that is what settles where it belongs: it does not ask for a long wall but for a quiet surface to frame it – the space between two windows, the wall above a low cabinet, or a corner where the eye stops instead of running on. Because the figures are spread across the width rather than into depth, the painting does not open a room but closes it, so it works even where the wall is short. For a smaller room we suggest 90 x 75 cm, for a clear living-room wall 120 x 100 cm, with 110 x 90 cm as the step between them. Below 70 x 60 cm the four figures begin to read as a single group and the crab on the right disappears, so we do not suggest smaller sizes.

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. Bathers with a Crab 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: four bathers on a rocky shore, with a crab on the stone, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 70 x 60 cm to 150 x 130 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the crab tells no story – it is a tiny detail on which the glances of three figures converge

See also:

• Young Girl Bathing
• Long-haired Bather
• The Bathers