# Large Bathers \(Les Grandes Baigneuses\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [RENOIR, Pierre-Auguste]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 118 x 171 cm ## Commentary Renoir's change of direction between 1884 and 1887 was dictated by an individual approach. The spontaneity of Impressionism, as well as its traditional fondness for landscape, gave way to a gradual elaboration of composition that enabled Renoir to reexamine the problem of the nude in a landscape. For his Large Bathers, Renoir did a number of preliminary designs. Having been a Delacroix admirer in his early years, Renoir here seems to turn toward Ingres, and the way he neatly outlines his shapes places him in the context of the nude that in the 1890s was to preoccupy such artists as Félix Valloton and Charles Maurin. Faced with criticism of his new style after completing The Large Bathers, an exhausted Renoir never again devoted such painstaking effort to a single work. ## Related artworks - [A Box at the Theater \(At the Concert\)]() - [Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando]() - [After the Bath]() - [At the Luxembourg Garden]() - [At the Theatre \(La Première Sortie\)]() - [Banks of the Seine at Champrosay]() - [Bather Arranging her Hair]() - [Bather \(Grande Baigneuse\)]() - [Bather]() - [Blossoming Chestnut Tree]() - [Bouquet of Chrysanthemums]() - [By the Seashore]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()