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Shown from about the knees up, a woman with pale, pink skin and cinnamon-brown hair sits with her hands in her lap as she gazes off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left but she looks in the other direction with round blue eyes. She has a straight nose and her wide, peach lips are closed in a soft line. Her hair is parted down the middle and tied back at the nape of her neck with a purple ribbon. She wears a long-sleeved, periwinkle-purple dress with black five black buttons down the front. Black lace lines her cuffs and her shoulders where the sleeves meet the bodice, and a black bow is tied around the high collar. She wears a wide black belt with a gold, rectangular buckle. A black lace shawl is wrapped around her waist and she holds it closed under her overlapping hands, which rest in her lap. Her full skirt spans the width of the canvas along the bottom edge. She wears gold hoop earrings with gray, oval stones at the front of each loop. On the hand we can see, she wears gold rings set with stones on her ring and pinky fingers. Her emerald-green chair has a rounded back. One vibrant yellow button is seen near her shoulder, and another is mostly covered by her skirt. The background behind her is stone gray to our left and shamrock green to our right. The portrait is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, especially in the dress and background. The artist signed and dated the painting “A. RENOIR, 1865” along the edge of her skirt on the right side.

Auguste Renoir

Mademoiselle Sicot, 1865

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 90

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 116 x 89.5 cm (45 11/16 x 35 1/4 in.)

framed: 141 x 113.7 cm (55 1/2 x 44 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1963.10.209

Artists / Makers

Auguste Renoir (artist) French, 1841 - 1919

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

center right: A. RENOIR / 1865

Provenance

Commissioned c. 1865 by the sitter, Mlle Sicot; by gift to Mme Aline Ménard-Dorian [d. 1929], Paris;[1] (her sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 2 December 1929, no. 13); Georges Bernheim, Paris; sold to (Demotte Galleries); sold 1930 in conjunction with (Marie Sterner Galleries, New York) to Chester Dale [1882-1963], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.

[1] Mme Ménard-Dorian has sometimes been identified as the second wife of writer Victor Hugo; however this is an error. Her daughter, Pauline Ménard-Dorian [1870-1941] married Hugo's grandson Georges Hugo.

Associated Names

Dale, Chester
Galerie Georges Bernheim
Marie Sterner Gallery
Ménard-Dorian, Aline
Sale, Paris

Exhibition History

1931: Portraits of Women Loan Exhibition: Romanticism to Surrealism, Museum of French Art, New York, 1931, no. 15

1931: Renoir and His Tradition, Museum of French Art, New York, 1931, no. 10

1965: The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

2010: From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 2010-January 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1929: Art News 28 (21 December 1929):7.

1930: "Buy Renoir Canvas Here." The New York Times. 7 December 1930:II:5

1930: Dale, Maud. "Impressionists Become Old Masters." New York American (16 November 1930): repro.

1930: Monda, Maurice. "L’Art aux enchères." L'Art vivant 6 (1 January 1930), 32, 34.

1931: Dale, Maud. "Amerika und Europa." Kunst und Künstler (1931):repro. 244.

1931: Dale, Maud. "Auguste Renoir," Creative Art IX, no. 6 (December 1931):450-454, repro.

1931: Frankfurter, Alfred. "Thirty-five Portraits from American Collections." Art News 29, no. 33 (16 May 1931): 4, repro.

1931: Pantheon 7 (February 1931): 95, pl. 13*.

1931: "Portraiture: Examples at the French Museum and Elsewhere." The New York Herald Tribune (25 January 1931): section VIII, 8, repro.

1931: The New York Evening Post. 24 January 1931: Saturday Photogravure Section., repro.

1941: Catalogue of French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 11, repro. pl. XXI

1942: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 60, repro.

1944: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 60, repro.

1944: Frost, Rosamund. Pierre Auguste Renoir. New York, 1944: repro. frontispiece.

1944: Jewell, Edward Alden. French Impressionists and their Contemporaries Represented in American Collections. New York, 1944: repro. 70.

1953: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 70, repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 324, repro.

1965: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 106, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 113.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 99, repro.

1971: François Daulte. Auguste Renoir, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. Vol.I: Figures 1860-1890. Lausanne, 1971: no. 13.

1973: Champa, Kermit S. Studies in Early Impressionism. New Haven and London, 1973: 37-38, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 296, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 462, no. 668, color repro.

1984: White, Barbara Ehrlich. Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters. New York, 1984: 17-18, 87, repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 341, repro.

1997: Bailey, Colin B. Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an age.Yale University Press New Haven and London, in association with National Gallery of Canada Ottawa, 1997:96.

1997: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism, 1997, no. 226, repro.