This painting depicts Camille Doncieux, wife of Claude Monet, inside her home in Argenteuil, which Renoir, a close friend of the couple, visited frequently at the time. The artist approaches the composition through the diffuse treatment of light distributed over the entire surface of the canvas, a concept borrowed from plein-air painting and which makes a marked contribution to the representation’s overall sense of freshness. The forms, spontaneously marked by unequal points of focus, find themselves dissolved in a large part of the composition.

The intimate realism that characterises the motif, a mark of modernity, reflects a tendency common to Renoir’s generation. There are visible references to contemporary life (Camille is reading Le Figaro) and to the Japonisme in vogue at the time (through the detail of the bowl on the table), as well as allusions to the art of Goya and Manet, evoked through the diagonal placement of the reclined figure. Renoir portrayed Camille in the same costume in vertical format composition, housed today at The Clark, Williamstown (United States of America).