Renoir's career-making painting doubles as a picture of one of the most important literary living rooms in Paris — and the family dog gets to be furniture.
What you're looking at
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this portrait of Marguerite Charpentier and her two young children in 1878. Madame Charpentier was the wife of publisher Georges Charpentier, whose authors included Émile Zola, and her home was one of Paris's most influential literary and artistic salons, where writers, critics, and painters regularly gathered.
The painting that finally got Renoir noticed
Renoir submitted this portrait to the official Paris Salon of 1879, and it was accepted and well received, marking his first major critical success there after years of Impressionist work being dismissed by the same official juries. Part of that success is credited, by the Metropolitan Museum's own account of the painting, to Madame Charpentier's own connections and influence in Parisian arts circles — she was well placed to make sure the painting was well hung and well noticed in the crowded exhibition.
Renoir's youngest sitter is shown seated on the family's large pet dog rather than a chair, dressed in the kind of long hair and loose, dress-like clothing commonly given to young boys at the time, which has led some later viewers to mistake the child for one of Madame Charpentier's daughters.
One detail to look for
Look at the soft, Japanese-inspired furnishings and patterned rug in the background. Renoir includes them deliberately, showing off the fashionable, cosmopolitan taste of the Charpentier household as part of the portrait itself.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original — 153.7 x 190.2 cm, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — so what you hang is honestly scaled, not a guess. Shop the canvas print.