RENOIR'S NUDES

When I lived in Paris in the late l970s, the Impressionist museum was across the street from my office in the Talleyrand building.  During a later visit to Paris  I was disappointed to find the entire Impressionist collection had been moved to the fourth floor of the new Musee d’Orsay.  That was in effect moving them to the attic of what was once a handsome Parisian railway station. But it has always been  how the French treat the Impressionists. Formerly the Impressionists were not allowed into the Louvre Palace Museum proper but were relegated to an outbuilding, the royal tennis court, which was why I could walk across the street at will to view them.  

          Even so, I was delighted to view the paintings again on whatever floor they were and in 2000 spent an entire day roaming through the impressionist galleries in a half empty museum during a sunny weekday in late winter.  When I came to the Renoirs I stood for some time in front of one of the best of his 1918 painting of young bathers, Les Grandes Baigneuses.  Two plump, lovely, nude young women, lie next to each other, relaxing after their bath.  The painting is full of warm dreamy oranges, yellows, and greens.  

          In the background, as I circled the gallery of Renoir’s canvasses, I could hear a group of school girls, laughing, exuberant and joyful.  The first two, smiling dark-haired girls in blue skirts and white blouses, danced into the Renoir gallery.  They stepped up to Les Grandes Baigneuses and inspected the two young women closely. Suddenly one, in glee, turned to her companion and said,

"Look!  There are three! she said pointing at the bottom bather."

Then she walked up to the painting, dragging her companion by the hand,

"One," and she pointed to the bather’s right breast.  "Two," and she pointed to the bather's left breast.  "And three,” she said triumphantly, pointing to the bather's right elbow.   And, as in one of those geometric figures in psychology books used to teach us about perception, it was possible, looked at in a certain way, that the elbow could be seen as the bather's third breast.  After a moment of observation her companion agreed with her.  There were indeed three.  These two turned back to the next two girls in blue and white who had just entered the room, and announced with excitement,

"Look!  There are three!”

Then the first girl again walked up to the painting, and said, 

"One," and she pointed to the bather’s right breast.  "Two," and she pointed to the bather's left breast.  "And three,' she said triumphantly, pointing to the bather's right elbow."   Influenced by the excited enthusiasm of the first two girls, the second pair of school girls immediately agreed.  Indeed, this young woman in the painting had three breasts and wasn't that fun! 

So, this group of four ran back to drag the rest of their classmates and their teacher into the gallery to show them this amazing discovery.

Soon I heard a chorus of "Oui, Oui!  Il y en a trois!"  "Yes, yes, there are three."

It was obvious to the half-dozen of us who had been watching this little drama that things had gone too far for correction by the time their mother goose, a teacher plump like Renoir's bathers and wearing dark rimmed glasses, entered the gallery. She was trying to hush the girls who by now were gathered in a group in front of painting, commenting, tittering, all fascinated to see A nude woman with three breasts.

"Oh, no, no, there are not three," I heard the teacher say.  “There are only two.  What you are calling the third brest is her elbow.   Can't you see?” 

          The teacher blushed as she looked around at the other adults in the gallery who were now as interested in the reaction of the children to Renoir's painting as the children were in this unusual piece of art.   

After a few more attempts to demonstrate there were not three breasts in Renoir’s e painting, but only two, the teacher gave a Gallic shrug as her charges danced happily into the next gallery.  As they moved on we could hear the teacher still trying to hush them and the girls still twittering, still pleased with their surprise discovery.