Woman with Black Hair (Jeune femme aux cheveux noirs, buste)

Woman with Black Hair, 1911, belongs to Renoir's late series of female bust studies at the Barnes Foundation that isolate the head and upper torso to concentrate on the face and hair as colour subjects. Dark hair was relatively unusual in his figure painting, where he more often depicted fair or auburn-haired women, and the deep black-brown mass against the warm flesh tones of the face created a tonal and chromatic contrast he explored deliberately. The Barnes Foundation holds several of these concentrated late half-figure studies as demonstrations of his sustained formal inventiveness.

The dark hair mass provides a strong tonal anchor against which the warm flesh of the face achieves maximum luminosity. Renoir models the hair with fluid, directional strokes that suggest its texture and movement, while the face is built with his characteristic layered, blended warm flesh tones.