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

Caryatids (Deux baigneuses, panneau décoratif), 1910, is an explicitly decorative composition in which two standing female figures perform the architectural role of caryatids—columns replaced by human forms—within what appears to be a garden or natural setting. Renoir had always been interested in the decorative traditions of French painting and the applied arts; his early career as a porcelain painter at the Sèvres factory shaped his lifelong sense of painting as ornament as much as representation. The 1910 date places this firmly in his late Cagnes period when large decorative figure compositions preoccupied him.

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.