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Your gallerySeated Bather
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Compare the foreground figure’s rounded limbs with the smaller bathers behind her, then follow the white cloth between her knees.
This late Renoir gives the nearest bather a monumental presence, while two smaller figures behind her dry themselves and adjust their hair. The museum’s catalogue connects the main pose to ancient sculpture, but small details such as the earrings place the model in Renoir’s own time. Classical references and everyday gestures coexist.
Oil on canvas · 81.1 × 67.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Impressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Seated Bather
- Artist
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
- Date
- 1914
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 81.1 × 67.2 cm (31 7/8 × 26 7/8 in.); Framed: 92.8 × 80.7 × 6.4 cm (36 1/2 × 31 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Endowment; through prior bequest of Annie Swan Coburn to the Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Fund; through prior acquisition of the R. A. Waller Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.