Lucie Berard (Child in White) (1883): Artwork and History

Lucie Berard (Child in White) (1883) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was celebrated in his lifetime for capturing the nuanced expressions of childhood. Recognizing this, his patron Paul-Antoine Berard commissioned the artist to paint a number of portraits of his four children, in addition to likenesses of himself and his wife. Here, Renoir portrayed Lucie, Berard’s youngest and one of the artist’s favorite models, as the picture of innocence at three years old. Her small hands, positioned rather formally at her sides, lack the accessories, like toys and books, found in some other of Renoir’s portraits of children; her white dress and subtle smile invoke a serene but fleeting moment of youth.

Object facts

• Title: Lucie Berard (Child in White)
• Date: 1883
• Artist attribution: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 61.3 × 49.8 cm (24 3/8 × 19 5/8 in.); Framed: 84.2 × 73.1 × 9.6 cm (33 1/8 × 28 3/4 × 3 3/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1172

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.