Water Moves Back In The Painting example essay topic

To speak of Renoir is to speak of color. It is true that all the Impressionists worshipped color and light. In Renoir's work the use of color merges together like a ecstatic feast, the light takes on material qualities, it foams and sparkles in his pictures. The colors illuminate the surroundings like precious stones illuminate a piece of undisturbed earth. Renoir used brilliant colors in his early works but seems not to have reached full maturity in his paintings till later, in which color becomes luminescent. Renoir's early background seems to lead us to the foundation of his craftsmanship.

Renoir had to start work at the age of ten to help financially support his family. He worked in a Paris workshop, porcelain painting for which probably gave him a sure eye for the selection and combination of colors. The powerful range of colors and the collective appearance of these colors are greatly rendered in Renoir's Grandes Biagneuses (Women Bathing). The painting was started in 1883 and completed in 1895. The painting is a rich forty-five inches by twenty-eight inches on a canvas backing. The foreground is highly dominated by the soft cream skins of three women figures.

While the background is taken up sharply by the rich purples, greens, browns, and yellows. Revealing a lingering river, supportive trees, and other assorted fauna. The paintings main focal point is of a nude woman sunbathing along side a riverbank, with all motion starting there. The woman is shedding a bathing blanket and exposing her self to the viewer in a very tender manner. The woman is probably nineteen years of age with still a touch of a baby face.

Her soft, slightly fleshy body stands faced before the viewer tilted to a minor angle. The woman is elevated slightly and her burgundy hair color, which is lighter then the rest of the figures, pronounces her (for reference figure two). She has perfect cream skin that has rarely danced with the sun. The figure is slightly more fleshier then the other women. Yet she is the beauty of the picture. Her movements are less dramatic then the figure below her to the left actions.

The woman has a soft, pronounced, subtle quality to her movement. She is slowly disrobing herself. The blanket, which falls just behind her shoulders, is a very soft brown material, almost fury. The material has the qualities of rich cashmere. The blanket would easily glide over her skin like the gentle care of a mothers touch. The woman's body faces towards the right corner of the painting, while her face is gazing at the action on the left side of the picture.

The woman's face directs the viewer at the action point of the picture, the woman in dynamic motion. Her facial features are very soft and sweet. The women sulky lips almost whisper something sweet, slightly open with a smile oncoming. The woman's face pushes the viewer towards the action with detail in facial features; this lets the eye glide right though the content of her face to the new direction of the eye. The viewer wants to see what the figure in the painting sees. Her flowing body also creates motion, directing the viewer downwards to the woman below her.

She is sitting erect creating movement down her body to the upshot leg of figure one (woman on the far left). The woman on the far left is again, the action point. Her left leg outstretched and right leg drawing back in a brisk, fast reaction, directs the eye towards her body. The woman (refer back to as figure one) is undoubtedly avoiding the tempted splash of the girl at the bottom right of the painting (for reference figure three). Figure one is a woman of twenty years. She is probably of aristocrat descent because the poor could not afford to frolic around the river in leisure.

Another clue of aristocrat kinship is her skin is of virgin buttermilk. A hard days work has not allowed the sun to stir and thicken her milky skin. The woman her self is of a very impressionistic nature. She is beautiful and slightly fleshy yet attractive unlike the thin, lean models used by Renaissance painters, or the very engorged women of the neo-classical period. The woman's legs and arms draw us up her nude body, past her exposed breast, towards her left arm firmly planted on the ground. The woman's facial features are of hast to move to avoid the cold water.

This figure has the darkest hair of the three women in the foreground. Her shoulders are swiveled away from the viewer, protecting her exposed front from the splash directed from figure three. The woman has a feminine shoulder line leading down her back to slightly full rump. Her tender thighs embrace between them a blanket, which conceals her virgin nature.

The white blanket between her legs is rough with a feeling of thickness. The many winkles of the blanket again create the idea of movement. The many lines concentrated in on place are the trademarks of motion. The motion then leads the viewer down the legs of figure on towards the girl in the water (figure three). The girl in the water is the youngest of the women at about sixteen years of age. The girls' most appealing feature is her impending action.

This woman is the catalyst of all motion in the painting. Her hair color is between the shades of the other two foreground figures. Her hair is back in a lose braid, tickling the bottom of her shoulder blades. Her hair falls slightly into her eyes in a very playful manner. Her lips are manifesting a sense of laughter, for she is acting childish. Past her hair is the line of her back running straight down towards a firm butt, a butt tight with age.

The girl's action is threatening, not yet in motion. Her hands in the water are creating a beautiful ripple effect, which leads beyond the foreground to the background. The water below figure three is a transitory object in the painting. The water is calmly rippling kindly past the woman's hand dipping in the water, still existing and alive in the foreground. Yet the water moves back in the painting to become a background eye teaser. The water is alive with color, a trademark of Renoir.

The water does not just sit stagnate but moves vividly back through the painting. Tones and shades laid upon the canvas are the technical movement the eye sees. The vibrant blues and purples are split with the yielding touch of many shades of yellows and greens. Creating the effect of depression and mounds along an unstable water surface. The water leads the eye back down the river to two more women frolicking about.

One of the women has her back to the viewer. Her arms are raised, clutching her hair. She is pinning her hair into place showing the viewer the delightful curves of a young body. The woman's arms and head are defined in humanistic detail.

Below the woman's neck though, all the viewer can see is a wonderfully sculpted, white silhouette of a perfect body. The other woman is basically a floating head and shoulder bobbing from the water. She has more of a generalized look about her. If one was to examine the figure up close, all her face would be is a pain taken touch of brown for the eyes and a bit of red comprising her mouth.

Moving back to the front left, the background behind the main figures is stylized rocks and generalized grass. The grass has dabs of purple but is mainly reflect by many tones and shades of green and yellow. Closely behind figures one and two is the overwhelming mass tree leaves and a branches. The leaves are depicted though dark greens and tangy yellows sharply placed on the canvas. The tree branches are painted as harsh and stiff with the use of solid shades of brown and straighter lines, rather than round, curved lines that imply softness. Beyond the immediate background filling the top right upper quadrant of the painting are blurred trees represented with mild greens and browns.

The sky is also represented in this part of the painting as two layers. The bottom half of the sky is a cotton white, with a slight shade of gray to it. The top layer to the sky is a single layer of blue that completes the simplistic yet realistic nature of this piece..