Portrait Mademoiselle Ir?ne Cahen d`Anvers (Little Irene), 1880
Oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm
Signed & dated upper right: Renoir 80
Dauberville 506

Renoir, who had no independent financial means like Cézanne, needed portrait commissions in order to live, even in the 1870s, when he created his greatest masterpieces. For this reason, he frequented the houses of the haute bourgeoisie; he knew the publisher Charpentier, whose receptions were delightfully described by Rivi?re, the Berards in Paris and Wargemont, Cernuschi and the banker and proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", Charles Ephrussi. At the house of the latter he met the financier Louis Cahen d?Anvers, who commissioned him to paint his daughter Ir?ne, The picture was done in 1880 during two sittings in the banker's house at rue Bassano. The then eight-year-old girl in a pale-blue Sunday dress sits turned to the left, the perfect model, her hands in her lap. Her head is slightly inclined, her gaze dreamy, inquisitive. Her abundant reddish-blonde hair falls over her shoulders and back, and she has the bangs that were the fashion of that period. Renoir has placed the figure before a tapestry-like background of green foliage, against which the delicate three-quarter profile of the girl stands out clearly. This heralds the "lngnsm" of the 1880s. One year later Renoir was commissioned to paint Ir?ne?s two younger sisters.