La grande laveuse

The great figurative painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir also practised sculpture, from 1913 until his death. Afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis that caused his joints to become deformed, Renoir drew and guided the hand of Richard Guino, a young sculptor recommended by his friend Aristide Maillol. La Grande Laveuse is the final sculpture created by the master in collaboration with Guino, who made the plaster in 1917. It represents a nude female figure in a crouching pose, one knee on the ground as she washes clothes. The sculpture was originally intended to be part of a group associated with the male figure of the Forgeron or blacksmith, with the couple symbolising the antagonism between fire and water, man and woman. The female figure is reminiscent of the characters depicted in his numerous impressionist paintings. Cast in 1984, the sculpture was acquired by the State of Monaco in 1994.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French painter born in 1841 in Limoges. Born into a family of artisans in Paris, he was taken on as an apprentice by a porcelain workshop at the age of thirteen. He took evening classes at the École de dessin et d’arts décoratifs, and in 1862 enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
At the studio of Charles Gleyre, he met Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. The four young men forged a close friendship, and would regularly paint outdoors. Under Monet’s influence, Renoir learned to render the effects of light, no longer using black to create shadows. He produced his masterpiece, the Bal du moulin de la Galette, for the 1878 exhibition of impressionist painters. In the 1880s, he evolved towards a more realist style, painting nudes, portraits, landscapes, seascapes, and still lives. He was also a pastellist, engraver, lithographer, sculptor, and drawing artist. He died in 1919 in Cagnes-sur-Mer, at the Domaine des Collettes, which is now the Renoir Museum.