Auguste Renoir - A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant 1874

Serving girl from Duval 1874 — A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant
1874 100x71cm oil/canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

« previous picture | 1870s Renoir Paintings | next picture »

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
Renoir portrays a waitress who worked at one of several Parisian restaurants established by a butcher named Duval. An 1881 Baedeker guidebook described these "Établissements de Bouillon" as offering a limited and affordable menu to patrons "waited on by women, soberly garbed, and not unlike sisters of charity." Renoir imparted to his comely model an unaffected grace. As he once said, "I like painting best when it looks eternal without boasting about it: an everyday eternity, revealed on the street corner: a servant-girl pausing a moment as she scours a saucepan, and becoming a Juno on Olympus."

Picasso revised the painting a great deal before settling on the final arrangement: he
first depicted Harlequin without ruffs at the neck or cuffs; a large glass stood on the
table where the match striker now appears; Harlequin's bicorne hat originally rested
behind his right hand; and the floral wallpaper was more extensive and not hidden by
the high banquette. - art-Picasso.com

While van Gogh waited for Paul Gauguin to join him in the Provençal
city of Arles in 1888, Vincent van Gogh painted five audaciously
decorative still lifes of sunflowers in simple earthenware jugs. At least
two of these canvases decorated Gauguin's bedroom when he reached
the city late in October, and the French painter came to admire
them greatly. - art-vanGogh.com

art-Renoir.com

Auguste Renoir 1841-1919