Auguste Renoir - The Braid. Suzanne Valadon 1886

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From Museum Langmatt:
Renoir had the model Suzanne Valadon — who was later to become a talented painter herself — pose as a peasant girl, or "Italienne". Corot and Bouguereau also depicted this popular motif in many pictures. Precise contours accentuate the young woman’s voluptuous body, which is moulded almost sculpturally in a technique reminiscent of the Old Masters. It contrasts with the vegetation in the background, which is painted with diagonal brushstrokes. This well-known painting displays typical characteristics of Renoir’s “période ingresque” — the years after 1883, when he felt he had exhausted the resources of Impressionism and reverted to virtuoso draughtsmanship and an academic style of painting.

In 1886,Van Gogh writes to a friend: ‘I have made a series of colour studies
in painting simply flowers (…) seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red
and green, yellow and violet, seeking the broken and neutral tones to
harmonise brutal extremes. Trying to render intense colour and not a grey
harmony’. - art-vanGogh.com

In his book Noa Noa Gauguin describes his experience of Tahiti and its inhabitants
on his arrival in 1891. He describes the woman in the portrait thus: 'She was not
pretty – at least not by European standards – but beautiful.' Disillusioned with
Europe and the Western art scene Gauguin took his leave and went in search
of a new beginning in the Pacific Islands. - art-Gauguin.com

art-Renoir.com

Auguste Renoir 1841-1919