Auguste Renoir - Reclining nude 1883

« previous picture | 1880s Renoir Paintings | next picture »

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
Nudes and the grand tradition of classical art preoccupied Renoir in the 1880s. In this painting, he paid homage to Ingres's Grande Odalisque (Musée du Louvre, Paris), although he transformed Ingres's cool courtesan into a healthy, pink-cheeked girl, and the harem into an Impressionist landscape reminiscent of the Channel coast.

In 1886,Van Gogh writes to a friend: ‘I have made a series of colour studies
in painting simply flowers (…) seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red
and green, yellow and violet, seeking the broken and neutral tones to
harmonise brutal extremes. Trying to render intense colour and not a grey
harmony’. - art-vanGogh.com

In his book Noa Noa Gauguin describes his experience of Tahiti and its inhabitants
on his arrival in 1891. He describes the woman in the portrait thus: 'She was not
pretty – at least not by European standards – but beautiful.' Disillusioned with
Europe and the Western art scene Gauguin took his leave and went in search
of a new beginning in the Pacific Islands. - art-Gauguin.com

art-Renoir.com

Auguste Renoir 1841-1919