Bather in Three-Quarter View (Baigneuse vue de trois quarts)

Bather in Three-Quarter View, 1911, belongs to Renoir's systematic late exploration of the female nude in varied orientations—front, back, profile, three-quarter—that he pursued at Cagnes throughout the 1910s. The three-quarter view offered a compositional middle ground between the full frontal and the profile, allowing him to show both the face and the bulk of the torso while creating a dynamic rotational quality in the figure. The Barnes Foundation holds several such orientation studies that together constitute a comprehensive late investigation of the standing female figure.

The three-quarter turn creates a slight spiral in the figure's pose that Renoir emphasises through his warm, rounded brushwork. The flesh is modelled with particular attention to the turning of the torso and the way light falls differently on its various planes, building volumetric presence through colour modulation.