Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children (also known as Madame Charpentier and Her Children) is an 1878 oil on canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It depicts Marguerite Charpentier, a French salonist, art collector, and advocate of the Impressionists, and her children Georgette and Paul. The painting is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Background French publisher Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), a wealthy patron of the naturalist genre of writers, particularly French author Émile Zola, was an early advocate and collector of Impressionist works. He married Marguerite Lemonnier in 1871. Georges began buying paintings by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) in the 1870s. Charpentier purchased two landscapes and one portrait by Renoir at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1875, including The angler (Le Pêcheur à la ligne, 1874), Garden with dahlias (Jardin aux dahlias), and Head of a woman (1875). After the auction, Zola introduced Charpentier to Renoir. By 1876, Marguerite and her husband became known for holding Friday salons at their house at 11-13 rue de Grenelle, attracting the most famous writers, artists, musicians, and politicians in Paris. At this time, Renoir, Claude Monet (1840–1926), and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899) were sending letters of correspondence to the Charpentier family appealing for financial help. From 1876 to 1879, the Charpentiers became Renoir's primary patrons. Development Madame Charpentier commissioned a portrait of her daughter (Mademoiselle Georgette Charpentier) from Renoir in 1876, and a year or so later a portrait of her son (Paul Charpentier). In that same year, Renoir received a commission from Georges Charpentier to paint a portrait of his wife. He submitted the bust portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier, showing her head in three-quarters pose to the right, and that of Georgette, along with six other paintings to the third Impressionist exhibition on the Rue Le Peletier in April 1877. French art historian Léonce Bénédite would later describe the initial painting of Madame Charpentier as an "exquisite little portrait" and a "charming likeness". British art historian Colin B. Bailey argues that these portraits of Madame Charpentier and Georgette were a trial run for his subsequent work that would reach the Salon just several years later.