Description of the painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir “Reading a Girl”

Description of the painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir Reading a Girl

The hard work on the portrait of the reading girls helped the artist Renoir to achieve the sensation of a blinding sun glare. The light ignites the already bright red hair, and falls directly on the old pages of an open book, reflecting off the paper on a snow-white young face. Sunshine is everywhere.

The artist imposes paints with a special thick technique, without using smooth and soft strokes. On the canvas, they look separate, but at the same time whole spots. For example, a bow is located on the neck, made with thick white strokes. And on top of it coarse strokes applied blue and red paint. All these strokes are combined into one, and depict a subtle play of reflections of sunny color. Such extraordinary techniques permeated the entire picture of the artist.

The paints are overlaid with thick strokes, spots, or simply rubbed onto the canvas with a spatula or even a finger. In places where the artist focuses complex light effects, he puts double and triple layers. All of them merge into a single juicy symphony of light and shadow, conveying the charm of the day sun.

Renoir managed to capture a moment. Such a simple plot of the work helps the viewer to focus on the whole painting, on the mastery of the author, and is able to portray such a charming moment. All the contours in the figure are unstable, not clear and not traced, the main role in the work is assigned to precisely color diversity and solution.

The particular elegance of the picture gives such a significant contrast: light skin, hair and book pages against the dark blue wall. Light highlight gently go to the girl’s sweater, demarcating and emphasizing the volume shoulder. It is not surprising that many experts consider this picture of Renoir to be the pinnacle of French impressionism.


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Description of the painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir “Reading a Girl”