Though the identity of this woman remains unknown, she embodies Renoir’s ideal parisienne—young, pretty, and smartly dressed. In the mid, 1870s, working toward his celebrated multi-figure composition Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (today in the Musée d’Orsay), Renoir produced dozens of small studies like this one. He often gave them away to his friends, perhaps including Eugène Murer, the painting’s first owner, who described it as, as “modiste à la marguerite, adorable petite tête” (“dressmaker with a daisy, adorable little head”).
Details
- Artist Name: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919)
- Title: Young Woman in Black
- Date: c. 1875-1877
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 13-1/8 x 10 in. (33.3 x 25.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation, from the Estate of Jennifer Jones Simon
- Accession Number: M.2010.1.3.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
George Viau, Paris (sale, Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, 4 March 1907, lot 66, as Jeune Femme, for Ff 4,100, to);
[Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, to];
Paul Harth, Paris, sold 15 June 1938 for 300,000 fr. to;
[Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, stock no. 26,935, photo no. 8702, sold 31 December 1938 for 400,000 fr. to];
[Reid & Lefevre, London].
[Galerie Étienne Bignou, Paris].
William A. Cargill, Carruth, Scotland (sale, London, Sotheby’s, 11 June 1963, lot 36, as Portrait de jeune femme en noir, to);
[Arthur Tooth & Sons, Ltd., for];
Norton Simon, by bequest to;
Jennifer Jones Simon Art Trust, to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Exposition de Renoir, portraitiste (1841-1919) organisé au profit de la "Société des Amis du Louvre"
- Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, 1938-06-10 to 1938-07-27
Salon d'Automne
- Paris, Petit Palais, 1904-10-15 to 1904-11-15
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and The Norton Simon Foundation_1
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1973-05-03 to 1976-06-15
- Alexis, Paul; and Trublot, Le Cri du Peuple, 1887, no. 39
- Gachet, Paul, Deux amis des Impressionnistes: Le docteur Gachet et Murer, 1956, p. 171
- Daulte, François, Auguste Renoir: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1971, no. 165
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Dauberville, Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Renoir: Catalogue Raisonné des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins et Aquarelles, 2007, cat. 335 p. 371
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 142 p. 262
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