Auguste Renoir - A Young Girl with Daisies [1889]

Auguste Renoir - A Young Girl with Daisies [1889], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

"I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch," Renoir announced to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888. Turning to the idle pastimes of young, middle-class girls, Renoir gave inimitable expression to his feeling that a picture, above all, "should be something likeable, joyous and pretty - yes, pretty. There are enough ugly things in life not to add to them." These paintings, which incline toward the graceful informality of Fragonard's work and the demure naturalism of Corot's, found a ready market in the early 1890s.

[Oil on canvas, 65.1 x 54 cm]