Study Torso Sunlight Effect

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Study Torso Sunlight Effect: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil Painting - Study Torso Sunlight Effect

Keywords: Study, Torso, Sunlight, Effect

Work Overview: Nude in the sunlight (Study Torso Sunlight Effect)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Date: c.1876
Style: Impressionism
Period: Association with Impressionists
Genre: nude painting (nu)
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 80 x 64 cm
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

The beautiful young woman, a 19-year-old model called Anna, with her very feminine body and delicate features, is the perfect embodiment of Renoir's ideal of womanhood. The painter remained loyal to this ideal to the end of his life.

Renoir is often considered one of the founding fathers of Impressionism. Though Renoir often emulated some of the defining characteristics of Impressionist painting like quick brushwork, a bright palette, modern life subject matter, and the effects of light, in his later works he begins to veer away from the traditionally impressionistic style. His subject matter and eventually his style revert back to the ways of the Old Masters he admired. In 1876, approaching his "Sour Period", Renoir paints Torso of a Woman in Sunlight. This painting, while very impressionistic in technique, is not so in subject matter; and while it is still reminiscent of Renoir's earlier style, there is a definite shift in subject. This painting is somewhat of a foreshadowing for Renoir's later, and more dramatically different, works.

Renoir's early works are often depictions of bourgeois leisure, but eventually he looked in a different direction and began obsessively painting nude women in nature as seen in Torso of a Woman. The viewer is virtually unable to give the scene a time or place; it seems that Renoir is already taking on the subject matter of a timeless nude - very uncharacteristic of typical Impressionism. The quick brushwork and muffled edges are clearly still in the impressionist style and Renoir's palette continues to be bright.

In Torso of a Woman, it appears as if the sun is shining through the trees and casting patches of light and shadow on the woman's body. There is seemingly no horizon and no defined separation between the garment the woman is wrapping across her lower body and the grass she is standing in. The background becomes an abstract mass of brush strokes and color.

When Torso of a Woman was first viewed, she was criticized for looking dead. The greenish tones of her body, meant to indicate shadow verse light, gave her a frightening appearance. Perhaps Renoir was making a bold move, however, attempting to represent a nude in nature.

Torso of a Woman in Sunlight is a particularly unique painting because it embodies, what I believe to be, the transitional point of Renoir's career. He began as a very typical Impressionist, working with urban, modern subject matter, the effects of light, a bright palette, and quick brushstrokes. He ended his career in a clashing of styles depicting very plump nude woman in nature in a timeless manner and combining impressionist technique with realist figures. Renoir was neither a typical Impressionist nor is Torso of a Woman in Sunlight characteristic of his works, but it is possible to say that Renoir varied his approach so often throughout his paintings that no one painting can describe his style perfectly.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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