After the Bath by Pierre Auguste Renoir

This is, quite possibly, my favourite painting of all time or, at the very least, in the top three (with Boucher's Miss Marie-Louise O'Murphy and Alma-Tadema's In the Tepidarium).  I first saw it, at the age of eleven, in my father's copy of  The Female Nude in European Painting (1957) by the French art critic and novelist Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (1883-1963).  This is a brilliantly selected survey from prehistory to Picasso. The largely black and white, but occasionally glorious colour, illustrations include some of my favourite paintings to this day. 

Not least of these, is the cover illustration of Renoir's After the Bath (1888). I still have this book in my library. It was this book that had me drawing my first non military figures, as I copied many of the pictures inside. It led to a lifelong interest in drawing and painting (and, indeed, ladies) and, five years after discovering it, I first combined the two, thanks to a brave and friendly girl from archery club, who I had softened up by looking at this book with her!