Woman with a Hat

Woman with a Hat of 1891 belongs to Renoir's transitional period — after the difficult critical experiment of his so-called dry style (manière aigre) in the mid-1880s and his gradual return to warmer, more atmospheric painting in the late 1880s and early 1890s. By 1891 he had resolved the crisis of the mid-decade and was moving confidently toward the freely handled, warm late style. The hat as an accessory held compositional significance in his figure painting from the 1870s onward: elaborate bonnets and fashionable hats provided colorful, formally complex elements atop figures and added a note of contemporary fashion that connected his figure painting to the world of Parisian modernity. The early 1890s represent an important transitional decade in his career, moving from the social vitality of his Impressionist period through the classical ambitions of the 1880s toward the settled warmth of his late mature style. This Barnes Foundation canvas was acquired as part of Albert Barnes's systematic effort to document the full range of Renoir's figure painting across the decades.

The hat's brim and trimmings are rendered with the same sensuous attention Renoir normally reserves for skin and flowers — ribbons and fabric treated as chromatic events. The face beneath is modelled in warm pinks against a loosely brushed, warm-neutral background. Costume and face compete equally for resolution, neither yielding to the other.