Shop art print and framed art La liseuse by Auguste Renoir

The Reader is a painting by the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painted in 1875-1876 and housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. As can be deduced from the title, the painting depicts nothing more than a woman completely absorbed in reading a book. The model for the painting is Marguerite Legrand, known as Margot, a beautiful young girl from Montmartre who was struck down by typhoid fever in February 1879. Her death was a cause of great sadness for Renoir, who recalled with regret that "she had skin that reflected the light". Indeed, Renoir greatly admired the chromatic and luminous qualities of his friend's complexion, and in this painting he attempts to highlight them using the emerging Impressionist technique. The bright red lips, the pink ruffle into which the girl's chin gently dips and the downward-looking eyes, described by two simple black lines, are particularly precious features. The painting was created in a studio, but retains magnificently the freshness and spontaneity of works born in a flash, in the open air, presenting themselves to the viewer with the immediacy of a photographic snapshot. There are no drawings or outlines, and the local colours of the skin tone are completely distorted by the effects of the light. In fact we are probably inside the Café Guerbois or the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, two of the Impressionists' most popular haunts, and Margot's complexion is built up by violent yellow brushstrokes, just as it is shaped by the golden hues of [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the modern period. It belongs to the impressionism style.

 

« La liseuse » is kept at Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France.

 

Find the full description of La liseuse by Auguste Renoir on Wikipedia.