Renoir’s Nymphs

Bather with long hair, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1896Today’s pictures of Renoir’s paintings is brought to you courtesy of my unconscious mind. Overnight I had a strange, convoluted dream which began with me in the role of historian, researching the lives of an aristocratic Swiss family of the nineteenth century. I watched the young women of the family bathing in a river, cavorting like some of Renoir’s water nymphs. They had the same figures too.

Flash forward to the present day and I was in a modern suburban street surveying their open-top carriage, a relic complete with faded cushions and book shelf that was stacked with modern, luridly-covered romance novels.

Bather, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1890The carriage escaped its moorings and started rolling down the hill before I could catch it (I was busy propping up an elderly but frail lady). Fortunately, and much to my relief, a shrub on the nature strip stopped the carriage short in its passage.

The dream didn’t stop there, but wandered through a disused mansion, a courtyard windswept with autumn leaves, and into a modern house lushly carpeted in white – and from there onto lunch with work colleagues, until my alarm woke me early this morning.

I can’t wait until tonight’s adventures!