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Lot Essay
The present work is a study for La Lecture (fig. 2), now housed in the Portland art Museum, Oregon.
The theme depicted in this picture, two young girls engaged in a common activity, was amongst one of Renoir's favourites. Around 1890 he executed several works introducing two unidentified girls such as in the present picture reading a book, playing the piano (fig.1), or picking flowers.
The young model with the blond hair actually reappears in his later composition La lecon de Piano (fig.1) one of a series of work which was bought by the State and had been originally been commissioned by Henri Roujon, Head of the Beaux-Arts in 1891.
Whether considered as intimate genre scenes or as double portraits, all these pictures were meant to celebrate youthful innocence (C. Moffett, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, p. 170).
The theme depicted in this picture, two young girls engaged in a common activity, was amongst one of Renoir's favourites. Around 1890 he executed several works introducing two unidentified girls such as in the present picture reading a book, playing the piano (fig.1), or picking flowers.
The young model with the blond hair actually reappears in his later composition La lecon de Piano (fig.1) one of a series of work which was bought by the State and had been originally been commissioned by Henri Roujon, Head of the Beaux-Arts in 1891.
Whether considered as intimate genre scenes or as double portraits, all these pictures were meant to celebrate youthful innocence (C. Moffett, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, p. 170).