Girl with a Watering Can by Pierre-Auguste Renoir Binder

A Girl with a Watering Can by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, oil on canvas 1876, is a full-length portrait painting of a little girl with blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair, deep blue dress with delicate white lace and large round buttons, holding a small watering can on a path in a colourful flower garden. The subject is said to be Mademoiselle Leclere, and was painted in Monet's famous garden at Argenteuil, Giverny. The deeply saturated, ultramarine blue of the little girl's dress and eyes is a dark contrast to the quickly painted, deep white, green, and pink of the surrounding flowers and grass, complemented by the brilliant red of her hair ribbon. Quickly and tenderly painted in luminous strokes of vivid oil paint, the picture emotes a tender image of childhood and stands as a remarkable accomplishment of the Impressionist school of painting and its concerns of light, colour and atmosphere. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919) was a French painter and leading figure of the 19th century French Impressionist movement. As a boy Renoir painted designs on fine china and fans, and studied paintings in the Louvre, until he went to study art with Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Monet, Sisley and other members of the Impressionist group. Influenced by the Realism of Courbet and the painterly sense of light and colour of Monet and other plein-air painters, Renoir developed a softly painted style of vibrant light and saturated colour. Renoir painted many portraits and landscapes but concentrated on dazzling scenes of contemporary life which captured a momentary snapshot in time, while the influence of Titian, Rubens and the Rococo painters inspired his many figurative paintings and domestic scenes. Renoir married and had three children who became accomplished artists themselves, and in his older age continued to paint prolifically while partially disabled by severe arthritis. In 1919 Renoir became nearly the only living artist honoured by an exhibition in the Louvre alongside the works of the old masters. Renoir's fluid, masterful technique, unique sense of light and colour, warm sensuality and human empathy made him one of the most beloved and popular painters of all time.