Girl with a Hoop Bookmark

Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
Girl with a Hoop, 1885

Auguste Renoir had developed the style of impressionism with his friend Claude Monet by the early 1870s. However, by the early 1880s he became dissatisfied with impressionism, and from 1883 to 1887 he worked in a severe, hard-edged fashion known as his manière aigre or “harsh manner.” In 1885, Senator Etienne Goujon commissioned Renoir to paint portraits of his four children; Marie Goujon, aged nine and the senator’s only daughter, is the subject of Girl with a Hoop. The painting is a beautiful example of this phase of Renoir’s artistic career.