Portrait of Madame Renoir

Renoir's 1885 portrait of his future wife Aline Charigot at the Philadelphia Museum of Art captures a pivotal moment in both their personal and professional lives. Renoir had met Aline around 1880 — she was a seamstress from Essoyes in the Aube region who modelled for him and became his companion — and by 1885 they had a son (Pierre, born that year) though would not marry until 1890. The portrait falls squarely within his 'dry period' or Ingresque experiment, when he was seeking firmer contour and more classical structure, and Aline's full, round features — which he found naturally beautiful — received a more deliberate, considered treatment than his earlier Impressionist portraits. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds one of the world's great collections of European and American art, and its Renoir holdings span the career from early works through to the late bathers. The portrait of Aline is particularly significant as a private image — not a commissioned work but a personal one, the artist observing with love rather than professional obligation the woman who would become the centre of his domestic world and the model for several of his most important figure compositions of the 1880s.

The portrait shows Renoir's transitional handling — more structured drawing and firmer modeling than his high Impressionist work, with color still warm and sensuous but applied with greater deliberation. Aline's full features are rendered with clear, tactile pleasure in the paint surface, the background relatively neutral to focus attention on the figure.