Head of a Young Girl

The anonymous female head study was one of the most persistent formats in Renoir's entire output, produced from the beginning of his career through to the final years at Cagnes. Head of a Young Girl, dated to around 1890 and held at the National Gallery of Art, belongs to the mature phase when these studies had achieved their fullest refinement as independent objects rather than preparatory works. The format had precedents in eighteenth-century French painting — Greuze's moralized girl studies and Fragonard's free figure fantasies — but Renoir stripped away their narrative and moralizing content to leave the purely chromatic and formal interest in the young face. By the 1890s he had resolved the 'dry period' crisis through which he had temporarily over-drawn and under-painted his figures, and these head studies show the recovered ease of a man completely fluent in his chosen medium. The anonymity of the model — she is a type and an individual simultaneously — allowed him the freedom to pursue purely pictorial interests without the social obligations of portraiture. Contemporaries including Berthe Morisot produced similar female head studies, and the informal intimacy of the format was particularly favoured by women painters who could use family members as models without the complications of studio hire.

The girl's face is modelled with Renoir's characteristic warm-flesh technique: a base of warm ochre, built up with rose touches on cheeks and lips, with cooler grey-rose in the shadow areas. Hair is handled with faster, more linear strokes than the face. The background provides a warm, indeterminate surround that does not disturb the luminosity of the skin.