9. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French 1841-1919. Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux, 1864. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Gift of the Hanna Fund, 1942.1065

In this portrait, Auguste Renoir captures the fine features, fair skin, and soft, downy hair of a nine-year-old girl. By using soft, loose brushwork and subtle color relationships, he conveys a sense of the subject's delicate nature. The white curtain at the left and flowers at the right act to frame and highlight the figure through contrasts of shape, color, and texture. The somewhat shallow space of the work, evident in Renoir's depiction of the chair, also works to emphasize Mlle Lacaux as the primary focus. The girl's face is not completely dissolved in the rapid brush strokes of the impressionist style, but retains the definition and detail of an academic portrait. Yet the emergence of impressionism can be seen in other areas of the painting--for example, in the flowers in the corner and the broad brush strokes of the dress.

Renoir was born in 1841 to a working-class family in the French city of Limoges. His father was a tailor who moved the family to Paris, where he hoped to find a better life. From the ages of 13 to 17, Renoir worked as a porcelain painter and progressed from painting decorative floral patterns to figures. Known in the workshop as "Baby Rubens" (after the Flemish master), he showed great skill in handling color. Eventually he saved enough to take classes at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied with the Swiss-born academic painter Charles Gleyre (1808-1874). Gleyre encouraged his students, including Claude Monet, to do quick, preliminary sketches before beginning a painting. Yet, unlike Gleyre, Renoir and Monet came to see these sketches as complete works in themselves. Renoir deeply revered the work of past masters and, in keeping with traditional painting, featured the human figure in his work

Vivian Kung and Patricia Richmond
Teacher Resource Center
Department of Education and Public Programs

© 1997 The Cleveland Museum of Art