Auguste Renoir | A Young Girl with Daisies | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Young Girl with Daisies

Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 5/8 x 21 1/4 in. (65.1 x 54 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1959

Accession Number: 59.21

Not on view

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"I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch," Renoir announced to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888. Turning to the idle pastimes of young, middle-class girls, Renoir gave inimitable expression to his feeling that a picture, above all, "should be something likeable, joyous and pretty—yes, pretty. There are enough ugly things in life not to add to them." These paintings, which incline toward the graceful informality of Fragonard's work and the demure naturalism of Corot's, found a ready market in the early 1890s.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Signed (lower right): Renoir.
Provenance

[Alexandre Rosenberg, Paris; bought from the artist about 1890]; Mme Alexandre Rosenberg, Paris (until 1912; sold to Bernheim-Jeune); Josse Bernheim-Jeune and his brother Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (from 1912); the latter's widow, Mme Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Monte Carlo (until 1959; sold to MMA)
Exhibition History

Paris. Durand-Ruel. "Exposition Renoir," March 10–29, 1913, no. 35 (as "La jeune fille aux marguerites," 1889).

Paris. Musée de l'Orangerie. "Exposition Renoir, 1841–1919," 1933, no. 88 (lent by MM. Bernheim-Jeune, Paris).

Glasgow. McLellan Galleries. "French Painting in the XIXth Century," May 1934, no. 38.

London. Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Ltd.. "Renoir, Cézanne, and their Contemporaries," June 1934, no. 29.

Paris. Bernheim-Jeune. "Renoir, portraitiste," June 10–July 27, 1938, no. 14 (as "Portrait d'une jeune fille aux marguerites").

New York. Wildenstein. "Renoir: In Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Renoir's Death," March 27–May 3, 1969, no. 66 (as "A Young Girl with Daisies").

Bellevue, Wash. Bellevue Art Museum. "Five Thousand Years of Faces," January 30–July 30, 1983, unnumbered cat.

Yokohama Museum of Art. "Treasures from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: French Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century," March 25–June 4, 1989, no. 96.

San Diego Museum of Art. "Idol of the Moderns: Pierre Auguste Renoir and American Painting," June 29–September 15, 2002, no. 4.

El Paso Museum of Art. "Idol of the Moderns: Pierre Auguste Renoir and American Painting," November 3, 2002–February 16, 2003, no. 4.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920," February 4–October 7, 2007, no. 102.

Berlin. Neue Nationalgalerie. "Französische Meisterwerke des 19.Jahrhunderts aus dem Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," June 1–October 7, 2007, unnumbered cat.
References

Renoir. Paris, 1913, p. 60, ill. between pp. 34 and 35.

L'Art moderne et quelques aspects de l'art d'autrefois; cent-soixante-treize planches d'après la collection privée de MM. J. & G. Bernheim-Jeune. Paris, 1919, vol. 2, pl. 112.

Joris Karl Huysmans. L'art moderne. reprint ed. [first ed. 1883]. Paris, 1919, vol. 2, pl. 112.

Gustave Coquiot. Renoir. Paris, 1925, p. 228, dates it 1889.

Julius Meier-Graefe. Renoir. Leipzig, 1929, p. 149, ill.

Léo Larguier. "Entre mille images, Renoir et le médicin." L'art vivant 60 (July 1933), p. 288, ill.

French Painting in the XIXth Century. Exh. cat., Lefevre Fine Art Ltd. Glasgow, 1934, unpaginated, dates it 1883.

Albert C. Barnes and Violette De Mazia. The Art of Renoir. New York, 1935, pp. 85, 107, 459, no. 179, date it about 1889.

Ole Vinding. Renoir. Stockholm, 1951, unpaginated, ill., dates it between 1889 and 1890.

François Daulte. Letter to Theodore Rousseau. April 4, 1963.

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. "XIX–XX Centuries." French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 3, New York, 1967, p. 157, ill., notes the likeness of the figure to that in "Place Pigalle" (Coutauld collection, London), which Renoir painted about 1880, but thinks there is a stronger resemblance to "A Girl Reading" (Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York), of 1888–90, both in the figure and in the application of paint.

François Daulte. "Figures." Auguste Renoir: Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint. 1, Lausanne, 1971, unpaginated, no. 565, ill.

"Leihgabenaustausch." Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Jahresbericht (1976), pp. 12–13.

Thomas Schlotterback in Five Thousand Years of Faces. Exh. cat., Bellevue Art Museum. Bellevue, Wash., 1983, unpaginated.

Margaret I. O'Brien. "L. A. Police Get 'Prince Frank' — $15 Million in Fakes Seized." IFARreports 10, no. 12 (December 1989), p. 4, ill, relates that "Prince Frank" or Frank de Marigny, alias Frank Orval, has been arrested on charges of grand theft because he offered this painting for sale, using a color transparency.

Susan Alyson Stein in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, pp. 140, 253, no. 102, ill. (color and black and white).

Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Michel Dauberville. "1882–1894." Renoir: Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles. 2, Paris, 2009, pp. 278–79, no. 1124, ill.
Notes

The young girl depicted here is probably the same model as the girl who posed for "A Girl Reading," of 1888–90. The MMA painting may be dated about the same time.