The Source (La Source)

The Source (La Source) of 1875 is an early major figure painting from Renoir's Impressionist decade, depicting the nude female figure in an outdoor spring or water setting — a theme that connected to the long tradition of female nudes at sources and fountains running from classical antiquity through Ingres's monumental La Source of 1856. Renoir's engagement with Ingres was complex and enduring: he admired the purity and precision of Ingres's line while finding his cool classicism temperamentally alien, and painting a 'source' subject in 1875 was an implicit dialogue with the academic tradition's most celebrated recent statement of the female nude in a natural setting. His version was warmer, more atmospheric, and more genuinely plein-air in its treatment of outdoor light on skin than Ingres's carefully controlled studio nude, asserting the Impressionist principle that even classical subjects could be approached through direct optical observation. The 1875 date makes this an important early demonstration of his ambition to engage the classical figure tradition through Impressionist means, a tension that would occupy him through his Italian journey of 1881 and into the formal experiments of the 1880s.

Light reflecting off the water source creates a diffuse all-over luminosity captured through a high-keyed palette and broken colour touches. The figure's contours are softened by surrounding light, avoiding any sharp outline.