Woman with Grapevine, 4th variant c. 1904 - 1919

This is Renoir’s "Woman with Grapevine, 4th variant", made with lithographic crayon. The sketchy quality and soft tonality make it feel immediate, a passing thought or a first idea. The surface is dry, as you’d expect with crayon, and the image has a strange layout, two studies, one in a frame, as if the artist is figuring out how to approach a painting. The woman on the left is reaching out, maybe pulling grapes from a vine. See how the artist renders her back, with these long fluid marks that emphasize her spine, then compare this with the shorthand of the woman on the right, who is captured with just a few strokes. It’s as if Renoir is weighing up different approaches to the same subject. It reminds me of Picasso, later on, thinking through the variations of a theme, pushing himself to find new approaches through an additive process. Art, for me, is about seeing what’s possible.