Peasant Girl with Dog
1894
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on 25 February 1841 in Limoges, the son of a tailor and a seamstress.
See the richer artist page1894
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Peasant Girl with Dog is a 1894 by Auguste Renoir, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A girl sits on a bale of hay, her dog curled beside her. The lines are loose and quick, like a memory half-remembered. Renoir drew this in red chalk late in life, trying to keep the fresh, fleeting feel of his earlier paintings. He made rural France look simple and peaceful, even if it wasn’t. If you like this, look up *impasto*—a technique where paint is laid on thick, like butter, for a similar sense of life and movement.
During the last decades of his career, Renoir worked prolifically in red chalk, which was used to develop a loose and sketchy style. In this drawing, the artist attempted to recapture the spontaneity that characterized Impressionist art a few decades earlier. By showing a young girl seated resting peacefully alongside a bale of hay, he idealized rural French life.
The art historian John Rewald supposedly called this work "one of the two or three most beautiful Renoir drawings in America."
Read the full account in the museum source.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on 25 February 1841 in Limoges, the son of a tailor and a seamstress.
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