Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children

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Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil Painting - Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children

Keywords: Madame, Georges, Charpentier, Children

Work Overview: Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children
(Mme. Charpentier and Her Children; Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe and Paul-Émile-Charles)
Artist:Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)
Date:1878
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:60 1/2 x 74 7/8 in. (153.7 x 190.2 cm)

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children (1878) is an oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He displayed it at the Salon in 1879. It drew much attention and admiration. Publisher Georges Charpentier commissioned the painting. It is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the painting: "Wearing an elegant Worth gown, Marguérite Charpentier sits beside her three-year-old son, Paul. Following the fashion of the time, his hair has not yet been cut and his clothes match those of his sister, Georgette, who perches on the family dog. Pleased with the painting, Madame Charpentier used her influence to ensure that it was hung in a choice spot at the Salon and introduced Renoir to her friends, several of whom commissioned work from him."

In this commissioned portrait, as Marcel Proust observed, Renoir gave expression to "the poetry of an elegant home and the beautiful dresses of our time." In the Japanese-style sitting room of her Parisian townhouse—the décor and chic gown testifying to her stylish taste—Marguerite Charpentier sits beside her son, Paul. At age three, his locks are still uncut and, in keeping with current fashion, he is dressed identically to his sister Georgette, perched on the family dog. The well-connected publisher's wife, who hosted elite literary salons attended by such writers as Flaubert, the Goncourts, and Zola, used her influence to ensure that the painting enjoyed a choice spot at the Salon of 1879.

A brilliant and attractive woman, with great influence in the world of letters, art, and politics, Madame Charpentier became interested in the Impressionists in the late 1870s, and particularly in Renoir. When he was commissioned to paint her - one of the most celebrated hostesses in Paris - at home with her children, Renoir seized opportunity to make an impressive showing in the Salon of 1879, and thus encourage the reception of his work in circles that could afford to pay for it.

The plate opposite is, in a sense, the result of a wonderfully successful compromise. Here is that rare hybrid, a picture that meets the requirements of society portraiture, while at the same time engaging the artist fully in terms of his own personal creativeness. The patron, understandably, subordinates his interests in pictorial values to his hopes for an agreeable presentation of those qualities in his family that are precious to him. And certainly, as a charming revelation of a particular woman and her children, of her personality and the quality of her home, this picture is an unqualified success, and was so regarded at the Salon.

But it is also successful as a Renoir: full of grace and freshness, and arranged with a freedom rather unusual in a picture in which the various elements are not the choice of the artist at liberty in his own studio. Boldly, the artist concentrates attention on the children and the dog, who rolls his eyes in mock anguish over the weight on his back. In contrast to these attractions, through the placing of the figures and the perspective of the rug, the eye is led to the upper right corner, where there is a grouping of handsomely painted details, and an exit into the distance. To lend stability to the canvas and localize the vision, the prominent and richly varied black of the dress is placed in the center of the composition, taking the eye, by means of an animated silhouette, to the edge at the right.

Black and white, in the dress and in the dog, provide one major color motif; blue, another. To set them off, coral panels appear in the background, and the other areas of the canvas embody nuances of all the major colors.

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We're going to take a slightly different direction with this post. Because there are too many fun facts about Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children to pass up, in no particular order, here are five pieces of trivia about Renoir's illustrious painting.

1. In the 1870s and 80s, Renoir was an in-demand society painter and it all started with this painting. Madame Charpentier and Her Children was commissioned in 1878 and first exhibited at the Impressionist Salon of 1879. Viewers and critics instantly recognized socialite Madame Charpentier as the wife of Georges Charpentier, the head of a successful publishing house. Society followers took note and a trend was born.

2. This painting features Madame Charpentier with her son and daughter. Yes, you read that correctly. Her son is in the painting. Paul is seated on the sofa next to his mother while his sister Georgette perches on the family's Newfoundland. And while it was fairly common for young boys to be dressed like girls while they were very young, it was much less common for a boy to be dressed exactly like his older sister in matching white silk reception dresses.

3. This portrait also reflected the relatively new development in portrait painting of including the subjects' surroundings. We can clearly see the Charpentier's luxurious living room decked out in the of-the-moment Japanese style with painted screens and bamboo furniture. If you've yet to go through the exhibition, take note. Japanese influence in interiors is evident in several other paintings.

4. The Charpentiers had very close relationships with many 19th-century French luminaries. In addition to Renoir referring to himself as the Charpentier's court painter, Madame also hosted a very influential Parisian salon, welcoming artists like Degas, Monet, and Manet and writers like Zola (Paul's godfather) and Flaubert into her home.

5. When the Charpentier's collection was sold at auction in 1907, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased it through an intermediary for the unprecedented sum of 92,400 francs. It was thus the first painting added to the Met's collection of Impressionist art.

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children was one of the paintings Renoir exhibited in the Salon of 1879. The painting was commissioned by Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), a publisher in Paris, who published novels of Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, and Goncourt. Charpentier and his wife, née Marguérite-Louise Lemonnier (1848-1904) collected paintings by the Impressionists.

The two children in the painting are Georgette-Berthe (1872-1945) and Paul-Émile-Charles (1875-1895). Following the fashion of the time, the boy's clothes match those of his sister Georgette.

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