Bather on a Rock

Renoir started at thirteen painting flowers onto porcelain in a Paris workshop, which is where the sweetness in his colour comes from. The trade collapsed when machines took over, and he went to art school instead. The 1870s are the well-known Renoir: dappled light through leaves, dancing, lunch running long. Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and Luncheon of the Boating Party both come from this stretch, and both are crowded with friends he actually knew. Then he stopped. A trip to Italy in 1881 left him convinced Impressionism had taught him nothing about drawing, and for several years he painted in a hard, cool, deliberately linear manner that most people disliked at the time and still do. Rheumatoid arthritis crippled his hands after 1900. He moved south to Cagnes, worked with the brush wedged into his fist, and kept painting nudes and landscapes until 1919. The late canvases are looser and hotter in colour than anything he made when he was well.