Romaine Lacaux (1864): Art, History and Details

Romaine Lacaux (1864) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This painting may be Renoir's earliest signed canvas. Its sensitive display of color and light communicates an ideal of delicate, youthful beauty. The luminous tones of the background drapery and of the child's white blouse result from the artist's careful observation of reflected light and color on translucent materials. The delicate nuances of color, particularly in the young girl's face, reveal Renoir's previous training as a decorator of porcelain. He painted this portrait, commissioned by the vacationing Lacaux family, during his stay at an artist's colony in the village of Barbizon, near Paris.

Object facts

• Title: Romaine Lacaux
• Date: 1864
• Creator attribution: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 106.7 x 89.2 x 8.9 cm (42 x 35 1/8 x 3 1/2 in.); Unframed: 81.3 x 65 cm (32 x 25 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1942.1065

A detail from the museum

The son of a poor tailor from Limoges, Renoir began his artistic career at age 13 as an apprentice to a porcelain painter.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne 751 (September/October 1928): cover.
• Hotel Drouot. "Auction. December 12, 1929." ARTnews 28, no. 7 (16 November, 1929): 11.
• Hotel Drouot. "Auction. December 12, 1929." ARTnews 28, no. 8 (23 November, 1929): 11.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.