Madame Georges Charpentier (née Marguérite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) and Paul-Émile-Charles (1875–1895)
Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)
I ALWAYS visit Madame Charpentier. The wife of a wealthy publisher, Renoir knew her husband who asked him to paint this seating. With it's vivid colors, it's forced perspective, the shifting gazes of the porcelain-complected subjects, and the formidable figure of Mme. Charpentier herself dominating the group in black, one's eyes are hurled around this painting in a frenzy of activity and motion, belying the quiet household setting, a loving one, as evidenced by the dog, "Fido" if you will, or the well-known symbol for fidelity in a marriage.
I have Renoir on my mind today. I must confess to having had grown less fond of him, him and his pretty paintings. They were commercially successful with their idealized subjects and doe-eyed models in a time when his contemporaries were struggling to eat. They lack the early signs of abstract expressionism of Cezanne, the primitive force of Gaughin, the ugliness of life in the rising bourgeoisie of Degas, the madness of van Gogh, and eventually, the brutal deconstructionism of Picasso. But he was an utter original, Renoir was. Copied poorly and ad nauseum for a century, I must remind myself that he was the first to apply color as boldly as he did, and, along with Monet, to start to dispense with the realism of his predecessors
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