By the Seashore

Renoir painted this portrait of a young woman by the sea in 1883, during the period when he was rethinking everything about his approach to painting. He had just returned from a trip to Italy, where he studied Raphael and the frescoes of Pompeii, and he was pulling away from the loose, broken brushwork of his Impressionist years. The canvas is vertical, about 36 by 28 inches. A young woman sits in a chair on a balcony overlooking the sea. She wears a dark dress with a high collar and a small hat, and she holds a small dog in her lap. Her face is turned slightly toward the viewer, her expression relaxed and a little distant. Behind her, the sea is a band of blue-green, with a coastline visible in the distance. The railing of the balcony cuts across the composition at waist height. The model was Aline Charigot, a seamstress from Essoyes in Champagne, who would become Renoir's wife in 1890 and the mother of his three sons. She appears in many of his paintings from this period, including the large Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881). Renoir painted her repeatedly over 20 years, and the paintings trace both his changing style and the arc of their relationship. The Italian trip of 1881-82 was a turning point for Renoir. He came back convinced that Impressionism had reached a dead end, and he spent the next few years trying to paint with cleaner lines and more structured forms. This portrait shows the transition: the face and hands are painted with a smooth, careful finish, while the dress and background retain the loose, flickering touch of his earlier work. The result is a painting that sits between two periods, belonging fully to neither. Oil on canvas, 92 by 72 centimeters. Renoir used a warmer palette here than in his earlier work, with ochres and umbers in the skin tones and deep blues in the sea. The paint is thinner than his Impressionist canvases, applied in careful layers rather than thick strokes. The vertical format and cool palette make this print work well in a bedroom, a bathroom, or a coastal-themed room. The blues and greens of the sea pair with white walls, linen fabrics, and natural materials. The 11x14 or 16x20 framed version is a good size for most spaces. The painting has a quiet, private mood that suits rooms where people actually spend time rather than rooms designed for display. The painting is part of the Havemeyer Collection, bequeathed to the Met in 1929 by Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer. The Havemeyer bequest was one of the largest gifts in the museum's history and transformed the Met's Impressionist holdings. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.