Sold – Renoir to Madame Charpentier

The year 1878 marked a sort of transformation in the life of Renoir and the age of Impressionism.  Although the first Impressionist exhibit took place in the mid-1870s, men like Monet, Sisley, Degas and Manet, many of whom had studied at the Gleyre school, still struggled for more formal success and to find an audience.  Gradually a small group of enthusiastic followers emerged, notably for Renoir the family of publisher Georges Charpentier.  In 1878 he would paint Madame Charpentier and her children.  Wearing an elegant Worth gown, Marguérite Charpentier sits beside her three-year-old son Paul. Following the fashion of the time, his hair has not yet been cut and his clothes match those of his sister Georgette, who perches above the family dog. Pleased with the painting, Madame Charpentier used her influence to ensure that it was hung in a choice spot at the Salon in 1879 and introduced Renoir to her friends, several of whom would later commission work from him.  The Charpentier name soon became closely associated with young Renoir’s success.

1878 is also the year in which Georges Petit began buying Impressionist works. Petit was just 22 years old at this time — and it was only a year after he inherited the business — so his involvement with the Impressionists began with the commencement of his career. However, this was at the end of the Impressionists’ leaner years, and their works had already begun to find a market. The gallery which Petit opened at 12, rue Godot de Mauroy in 1881 was a popular alternative exhibition space to the official Salon. Petit’s gallery later relocated to 8, rue de Sèze in the heart of Paris.  Petit made his private passions into grand social occasions, devising the series of Expositions Internationales de Peinture, the first of which was held in 1882. These events attracted the likes of Monet, Camille, Pissarro, and Sisley – and Renoir. 

In 1886, Renoir was in a period of great productivity in the hamlet of Chapelle-Saint-Briac, not far from Dinard and Saint-Malo in Brittany.  He convinced Madame Charpentier to lend her portrait “Madame Charpentier et ses Enfants” to Petit to be part of the culmination of the fifth of Petit’s expositions at his famed salon. There it was met with acclaim after years in her private collection, and sat next to works of other great artists, among them Monet and Sargant.  It remained there from June through July 1886, whereafter Petit kept it in his studio. 

Autograph Letter Signed, in French, August or September 1886, La Chapelle St. Briac, to Madame Charpentier. “The Petit exposition having ended, there remains only for me to thank you…As I hear you are not in Paris, won’t you please drop a word to Petit so that he might know if he should bring your painting or hold it until your return.  I am in Brittany in a wonderful place and I am working.  A thousand good wishes to Georges and kisses to the children.  Your good and sincere friend. Renoir.”

This painting was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and remains there to this day.  A review of auction records reveals no letters from Renoir to his benefactor Madame Charpentier have come up for sale in at least the last 35 years, nor any relating to this famous painting.