Description

The model for this elegant painting of a French bourgeois woman sewing may be Aline Charigot, whom Pierre-Auguste Renoir would go on to marry. The artist treated his domestic subject—a middle-class woman embroidering a textile—with vibrant color, light-filled atmosphere, and freely handled paint. Cobalt blue dominates the composition with striking contrasts of red and spare touches of yellow, relying on the optical effect produced by the close proximity of primary colors to enliven the composition and increase the sense of direct observation and spontaneity.

Provenance

Charles Deudon (died 1914), Paris and Nice [per Daulte 1971 and Distel 1989]. Paul Rosenberg and Co., Paris and New York, by Feb. 1921. [per Daulte 1971 and Distel 1989. Also Durand-Ruel Godfroy 1995 suggests that Deudon’s collection was sold by Deudon’s wife to Rosenberg]. Howard Young, New York [per Daulte 1971]. Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn (d. 1932), Chicago, by June 1931 [See “French Masterpieces That One Day Will Belong to Art Institute,” Chicago Daily News, June 1931, p. 14 (ill.), which illustrates Mrs. Coburn in her home with the Art Institute’s painting hanging on the wall behind her]; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.