Femme assise

In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Impressionist painter Renoir produced a number of intimate studies of semi-nude models posed in his studio, with a distinctive moss green background. In the present work, an elegant, partially-dressed young woman is sitting in profile in a cranberry-red armchair. Her golden blonde hair is tied on top of her head and her rose-colored dress has come undone, partially revealing her perfect breasts. Here, Renoir emphasized the woman's Rubenesque curves and the delicious pale pink of her skin; in the words of Peter Schjeldahl, Renoir's ideal woman was "creamy or biscuit white, often with strawberry accents, and ideally blonde" ("Skin Deep" in The New Yorker, 26 August 2019).
Renoir's study of the female body was undoubtedly informed by the colorists who came before him, such as Peter Paul Rubens, François Boucher and Eugène Delacroix. Yet Renoir also approached this traditional subject with a modern sensibility that distinguished him from his predecessors. As art critic Karen Wilkin observed, "His version of modernity is evident in the way ample bodies, made luminous by layers of transparent color, set off by more roughly stroked backgrounds, are made to relate to the geometry of the canvas without losing their identities as unequivocal emblems of female-ness" ("Renoir at the Clark" in New Criterion, 1 September 2019).
Femme assise has a particularly important Impressionist provenance. The work was acquired directly from the artist in 1901 by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who had provided critical support to the Impressionists from the infancy of the movement. Emile Schuffenecker subsequently purchased the painting from Durand-Ruel in 1913. Schuffenecker worked as a stockbroker with Paul Gauguin and similarly decided to become a painter instead. Though he is today remembered primarily as a friend and patron of other artists, Schuffenecker participated in the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 alongside Renoir.