La Liseuse

Renoir's interest in Provençal culture is reflected in his choice of subjects taken from daily rural life which became an increasingly significant proportion of his output after the turn of the century. While Renoir did not abandon his lucrative large-scale society-portrait commissions, his private work focused on informal portrait studies of family members and friends. These paintings are characterized by their more intimate style and smaller scale. In order to achieve a natural, relaxed effect, he asked his sitters to present themselves in their normal manner, dressed in the clothes they wore regularly, so that the finished result would be true to modern life. He then posed his subject against a neutral background that was devoid of distracting detail, allowing him to concentrate on the handling of the brushwork and to emphasize the luminous quality of the paint. La Liseuse dates from this mature period and is representative of the artist's concerns not only in its choice of subject but also in it's painterly treatment and palette of subtly modulated jewel tones punctuated with touches of luminous white.