Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Eugène Blot, Paris (sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 9-10, 1900, lot 147)
M. Cabrol, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Gustave Fayet, Béziers and Igny (1925)
Paul Rosenberg & Co., Paris (by 1929)
Wildenstein & Co., Paris
Grace Rainey Rogers, New York (sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, Collection of the Late Grace Rainey Rogers, November 18-19, 1943, lot 49)
Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, New York (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York, The Garbisch Collection, May 12, 1980, lot 29)
Mr Ebehard Igler (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 11, 1987, lot 24)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Jean-Gabriel Goulinat, "Les Collections Gustave Fayet", L'Amour de l'Art, Paris, April 1925, illustrated p. 140
François Daulte, Auguste Renoir, catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, vol. I, Lausanne, 1971, no. 79, illustrated
Elda Fezzi, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Renoir 1869-1883, Paris, 1985, no. 73, illustrated

Jeune femme à l’ombrelle was painted in 1872, at the beginning of Renoir’s involvement with the Impressionist group. During the early 1870s, the artist began experimenting with painting en plein air, preferring the freshness of natural light to the staid atmosphere of his studio. This technique presented a radical departure from the traditional, academic practice of painting from sketches and depictions of interiors, and it launched Renoir and his fellow Impressionists into the forefront of the avant-garde. With its quick, spontaneous brush-strokes depicting a young woman in nature, the present work is a fine example of the aesthetic that would come to define Impressionist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.

The subject of this work is most likely Madame Claude Monet, née Camille Doncieux, who sat for a number of Renoir’s paintings in 1872. A devoted companion to her husband Claude Monet, she accompanied him in many of his travels and was depicted in several of his works of this era. During the summers of 1872-74, Renoir frequently visited Monet and his family at their Maison Aubry in Argenteuil, a small suburb of Paris only fifteen minutes from the Gare Saint-Lazare. The present work was most likely completed while Renoir was on one of his sojourns to the Monet home, where he often painted portraits of his hosts and the environs of their Maison Aubry. Renoir usually depicted Madame Monet in the interior of her house, often reading or seated on a sofa. In Jeune femme à l’ombrelle, however, the artist has chosen to depict her outdoors, sitting in the sun with a parasol, enjoying the summer air. She appears to be in perfect harmony with her surroundings, the quick, broad brushwork of her white dress merging with the green of the grassy field around her, while the dark color of her hair mirrors the brown strokes of the trees in the background. Looking straight ahead and unaware of being watched, the woman creates a sense of ease and balance in the natural environment, a theme that would recur in some of Renoir’s most accomplished paintings.