art-Renoir.com

Auguste Renoir - Jeanne Sisley 1875

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

From Christie's auction house:
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
Jeanne-Adele Sisley was born on 29 January 1869, the second child of the painter Alfred Sisley. Sisley and Renoir were extremely close friends and Renoir painted him and members of his family on many occasions. In 1868, he executed a magnificent double portrait of Sisley and his wife Marie (Dauberville, no. 256), and he again painted Sisley in 1874-1875 (Dauberville, no. 543) and 1876 (Dauberville, nos. 96 and 207); he also depicted Sisley in 1866 in the celebrated group portrait Le cabaret de la mère Anthony (Dauberville, no. 229). In addition, he made a portrait of Alfred's father, William Sisley, in 1864 (Dauberville, no. 524).
In 1875, Sisley and Renoir were living in Louveciennes, a suburb west of Paris. That year Renoir painted both Jeanne-Adele and Sisley's son, Pierre. The portrait of the boy is marginally smaller and the two pictures do not seem to have been made as a pair. Sisley kept the two paintings until his death, at which time they passed into the collection of Jeanne-Adele, where they remained until her death in 1919.
Renoir was among the greatest portraitist of children in the nineteenth-century, and created such masterpieces of the genre as the painting of Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (Dauberville, no. 489) and the many studies of the children in the Bérard family. The present painting is an intimate and charming picture that exemplifies his achievement in this field. Jeanne-Adele's face is built up in rich white hues, her smock is treated in a light and fresh manner, and the painting of her silky hair is especially beautiful. The browns and grays of the background harmonize with the tones of the figure.