Nude

This nude by Pierre-Auguste Renoir belongs to the late phase of his career, a period usually dated from 1892 to 1919. A woman sits beside a stretch of water, surrounded by foliage, with a spreading tree and an open sky behind her. A towel lies nearby, which places the scene in a moment of outdoor bathing in a rural setting. The composition centres on the body and on the calm relationship between the figure and the landscape, rather than on any dramatic story. The palette combines warm tones in the skin with greens and ochres in the vegetation, giving the whole picture a unified, soft atmosphere. The record identifies the model as Gabrielle Renard. Painted in oil on canvas in 1910, the work is now held by the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. According to its documented history, it was bought in Paris in 1935 by Milan Kašanin, then the museum's director, with funds from the museum itself, the Ministry of Culture and private donors. Another account says it was presented to the Serbian people by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, a detail that should be treated with some caution, since the sources do not fully agree on this point. In 1996 the painting was stolen by an amateur thief, who damaged it badly. Recovered in poor condition, it needed a year of restoration. After the theft, the museum moved its entire foreign art collection into storage to protect it until a more effective security system could be installed. The painting's history shows how much conservation shapes the life of a work, even within a major institution.

Painter

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Date

1910

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

66 × 54 cm

Museum

National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade

Genre

nude

Depicts

tree, sitting, towel, broad-leaved tree, rural area, nude swimming, brown hair, prostrate shrub

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