Marie Murer

The portrait of Marie Murer documents one of the most important collector-artist relationships of early Impressionism: Eugène Murer, pâtissier, innkeeper, and passionate collector, was among the first patrons to acquire significant numbers of Impressionist works through direct friendship rather than gallery purchase. Between 1877 and 1880 he assembled a collection of around twenty-five paintings each from Renoir, Pissarro, Monet, and Sisley — works he acquired partly through barter (the artists ate at his restaurant in exchange for canvases) and partly through the small sums he could pay when larger collectors were still hesitant. His sister Marie and his son Paul were also painted by several Impressionists in this period. Renoir's portrait of Marie Murer at the National Gallery of Art belongs to the specific social world of the late 1870s Paris art scene — where friendship and aesthetic alliance were inseparable, and where patronage was personal and intimate rather than institutional. The Murer household at Montmartre hosted weekly dinners that brought together the Impressionist circle at its most socially cohesive, and the portrait of Marie is as much a document of that world as it is a record of an individual sitter.

Renoir paints Marie Murer with the warm directness of a friend rather than a formal commission, her face modelled in his standard warm-flesh palette but with an individual quality in the eyes and expression. The composition is simple — figure against a loosely indicated background — concentrating all attention on the face. Costume is handled summarily, subordinated to the portrait's psychological focus.