The Young Soldier

The Young Soldier by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painted around 1880 and at the National Gallery of Art, depicts a young man in military uniform — a subject unusual within Renoir's predominantly civilian figure subjects. France's military culture in the aftermath of the humiliating Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 gave soldiers a complicated social visibility: both symbols of national shame and recovery and objects of popular pride. Renoir's treatment is characteristically light in tone rather than solemn, approaching the subject with the same warm attentiveness he brought to his other figure studies of the period.

The military uniform provides Renoir with the formal structure of dark cloth, bright buttons, and insignia that he renders with the same color-based approach he applies to civilian dress. The young man's face is treated with the careful attention Renoir always paid to the specific quality of youthful skin — warm, slightly flushed — using the mosaic technique that gives his portraits their characteristic vibrancy. The background is minimal, directing full attention to the figure.