Seated Woman with Sea in the Distance (Femme assise au bord de la mer)

Seated Woman with Sea in the Distance, 1917, belongs to Renoir's very late production and sets a female figure before a view of the sea—likely the Mediterranean visible from the heights above Cagnes—combining his figure subject with the landscape prospect that his elevated home provided. The figure-with-view composition had classical resonances and was a convention of Italian Renaissance portraiture, and in Renoir's late version it frames the woman within the warm Provençal coastal landscape that had become his final home. This Barnes Foundation canvas is from his last full working year before his death.

The figure in the foreground is painted with Renoir's late warm flesh modelling, while the sea in the distance provides a cool blue-grey contrast that makes the figure advance through colour temperature opposition. The sky and coastal landscape are handled loosely with atmospheric washes of warm blue and ochre.