Bathing Group 1916

This is Renoir’s *Bathing Group*, and it's hard to put a date on it, but it feels like a painting made with feeling, with intuition and a willingness to let the process guide the outcome. The colors are so delicious, soft and warm like peaches and cream. The paint is applied in short, feathery strokes, and the figures are almost dissolving into the landscape, it feels like everything is vibrating. Look at the way the light catches on the shoulders of the woman crouching down – each dab of paint is alive with energy. It's less about depicting a scene and more about capturing a fleeting moment, a mood. It's Renoir trusting his gut, trusting the paint. You can see Renoir thinking about the paintings of Titian, another great painter, who also enjoyed painting women bathing in nature. Both artists understood that painting is really just an ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist, the subject, and the viewer.