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Marguerite, Lucie and Marthe Barard, 1884 |
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| Details |
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Description |
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| Artist |
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste |
Renoir’s three-month tour of Italy in 1881 had been a revelation to him. In Italian art he found a clarity of form, a precision of outline and a compositional skill that seemed just the qualities his own work lacked. He had, in fact, been unhappy with his work for some time and destroyed many of his paintings during his period, later confession to Vollard that in the late 1880s he felt he had ‘reached the end of Impressionism’; he had become averse to the depiction of the ephemeral , of the fleeting moment, and started to seek ‘an art of the museums’ .Renoirdidn’t just admired the forms and the compositions in Italian Renaissance. Ha also had been impressed by the smooth texture and clear colours of Italian paintings and sought to recapture these qualities.
The children in this work are the daughters of Paul Berard: 14-year-old Marthe (seated in the right), Marguerite, aged 10 (on the couch), and 4-year-old Lucie (standing).Renoir’s new ‘classical’ style is evident in the clearly defined faces and the clean modelling of the forms. |
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| Date |
1884 |
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| Institution |
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin |
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| Medium |
Oil on canvas |
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| Dimensions |
127 x 173 cm |
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