Jeanne Baudot (a gift from the artist)
Thence by descent
Private Collection 

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Renoir intime, 1969, no. 35, the left side illustrated in the catalogue
Troyes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Renoir et ses amis, Cinquantenaire de la mort de Renoir 1919-1969, 1969, no. 5, p. 26, illustrated pl. IV
Louveciennes, Musée promenade de Marly-le-Roi, De Renoir à Vuillard, 1984, no. 52, illustrated 

Jeanne Baudot, Renoir ses amis, ses modèles, Paris, 1949, p. 52, illustrated
Henri Perruchot, La vie de Renoir, Paris, 1964, illustrated
Jean Renoir, Mein vater Auguste Renoir, Diogenes, 1981, no. 28, the left side illustrated pp. 280-281

Canvas is lined but otherwise surface is fine. There is a reflective varnish which makes it difficult to examine the painting under UV light.
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Renoir's female portraits are central to the idyllic, harmonious worl💙d the artist constructed in his oeurve. He portrayed a wide variety of different female subjects during his career, from portraits of society women to working class girls, children & maternal figures, and then finally the great classical nudes of his final years. Yet nearly all his models are a means of depicting an underlying ideal that was Renoir's ultimate artistic goal. The archetypical Renoir female is plump with creamy skin, a full mouth and a distant expression, which allowed the artist to ignore the particular details of the face in search of the epitome of femininity.    

Despite the dreaml🐼ike, utopian aspect of these portraits, Renoir did possess a keen eye for detail, and his portraits are a valuable catalogue of the female fashions of the period. The son of a tailor and a dressmaker, Renoir was entranced by the dress of the day, as is clear from the care lavished on the depiction of the hat in the present portrait. His apprenticeship to a painter of porcelain equipped him with the fluid technique that gives his brushwork its distinctive quality and was perfectly suited to the rendering of the colors and forms of fashionable garments. The romantic, optimistic visions of his subjects combine this impressionist, feathery painting with an ambience taken from the pastorals of the 18th century Old Masters, in particular Rococo♒ masters such as Watteau and Boucher whom the artist particularly loved.

The sitter in the present work is Renoir's painting s𝄹tudent Jeanne Baudot, whose physician father was a close friend of Gallimard, the Parisian publisher.  Beginning in 1897, the artist conducted lessons in the Louvre where he encouraged his students to copy works by Old Masters.  Jeanne Baudot was also a frequent subject of the artist's, and forged a close relationship with him, becoming the godmother of his son Jean.

Please note this work has been requested for the Pierre-Auguste Renoir retrospective at the Grand Palais in 2009.