1864
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Romaine Lacaux is a 1864 unspecified by Auguste Renoir, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a young girl in a white blouse against soft, light-filled drapes. Her face glows with tiny, careful brushstrokes. The colors are gentle but bright, like early morning light. Renoir trained painting porcelain before canvases. That skill shows here in the way light bounces off the girl’s blouse and the folds of fabric. If you like how light moves on fabric, look up Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919).
This painting may be Renoir's earliest signed canvas. Its sensitive display of color and light communicates an ideal of delicate, youthful beauty. The luminous tones of the background drapery and of the child's white blouse result from the artist's careful observation of reflected light and color on translucent materials. The delicate nuances of color, particularly in the young girl's face, reveal Renoir's previous training as a decorator of porcelain. He painted this portrait, commissioned by the vacationing Lacaux family, during his stay at an artist's colony in the village of Barbizon,…
The son of a poor tailor from Limoges, Renoir began his artistic career at age 13 as an apprentice to a porcelain painter.
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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