Caryatids (Cariatides); also called Deux baigneuses (panneau décoratif)

Caryatids (Deux baigneuses, panneau décoratif), 1910, represents Renoir's explicit engagement with the decorative tradition of French painting — the understanding of the painted surface as ornament as well as representation — that had been central to his aesthetic since his training as a porcelain painter at the Lévy factory. The caryatid — a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural column — had ancient Greek precedent on the Erechtheum in Athens and had been revived throughout European architectural decoration; Renoir's painted version transposes the sculptural form into the warm chromatic terms of his late figure painting. By 1910 his ambition for large decorative figure compositions was intensifying even as his physical capacity was declining, and works like this one represent his attempt to produce something with the monumental quality of fresco or architectural decoration within the intimate format of an easel painting. The symmetrical, architecturally conceived arrangement of two figures is deliberately classical in its compositional intention.

The standing figures are placed symmetrically in a mirror-like arrangement that emphasises their decorative architectural function. Renoir paints the nude forms with his warmest late flesh modelling, setting them against a loosely indicated green and blue ground that suggests garden foliage and sky.