Day 324 - Renoir nude


December 8, 2022

Gallery 821 is one of a number of rooms devoted to the Walter H. and Lenore Annenberg Collection. I remember that when this gift to the Met was announced, it was regarded as quite a coup for the museum, since the Annenbergs lived in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art had also hoped to acquire the collection. A condition of the gift was that the works be shown together; I wonder if that had to do with the extensive remodeling of the 19th- century painting galleries some years ago.

The room includes works by Renoir, Monet, Degas, Fantin-Latour, and others.  Of these, Renoir's "Reclining Nude," measuring about 30 inches wide and 24 inches high and executed in 1883, immediately attracts me. The caption notes that the painting pays homage to Ingres' "Grande Odalisque"; to me, the model's auburn hair also calls to mind Titian (to whose Venuses I assume Ingres was himself paying homage).  But the differences are also striking.  Venus and the odalisque are grown women and look out at the viewer knowingly; Renoir's model faces away from us, lost in her own world.  The curves of her back and buttocks are sinuous,  but her strong shoulders and full pink cheeks are those of a robust country girl, not a siren. Moreover, instead of reclining on an elegant divan in her bedroom, she lies on a grassy slope facing the sea. I admire the way the multicolored vegetation picks up the brownish-red tones of her hair, while the blues used to contour  her back, thigh, and arms hint at the blue of the water in the background. Renoir must have had fun with his palette!
 

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