A pale-skinned young girl with blond hair, wearing a blue dress, stands in a garden in this vertical painting. The girl and background are painted with blended strokes, giving the scene and especially the girl a soft look. She faces our right and stands in the middle of the composition. Her shoulder-length cloud of hair is topped with a red bow, and long bangs frame her round face. Under faint brows, her sapphire-blue eyes look to our right. She has a petite nose, and her coral-pink mouth turns up in a slight smile. Her cobalt-blue dress is trimmed with wide, blue-white lace on the neckline, across the bottom hem, and down the front to either side of a row of white buttons. The white edges her petticoats come down to just below her knees, peeking out from under the flaring skirt. She wears white socks over blue ankle boots, which also have a row of white buttons down the side we can see. Her near hand is raised with her index finger hooked in the handle of a green watering can, and she holds two daisies by her side in her other hand. She stands on a path flecked with ivory white, pale purples, greens, and pink that curves up and to her left. A bush with emerald and pine-green leaves dotted with pink blooms fills the lower left corner. Behind her, green grass runs back to meet a profusion of pink, purple, and poppy-red plants and flowers that run along the top edge of the composition. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Renoir. 76.”

A Girl with a Watering Can

Auguste Renoir

A pale-skinned young girl with blond hair, wearing a blue dress, stands in a garden in this vertical painting. The girl and background are painted with blended strokes, giving the scene and especially the girl a soft look. She faces our right and stands in the middle of the composition. Her shoulder-length cloud of hair is topped with a red bow, and long bangs frame her round face. Under faint brows, her sapphire-blue eyes look to our right. She has a petite nose, and her coral-pink mouth turns up in a slight smile. Her cobalt-blue dress is trimmed with wide, blue-white lace on the neckline, across the bottom hem, and down the front to either side of a row of white buttons. The white edges her petticoats come down to just below her knees, peeking out from under the flaring skirt. She wears white socks over blue ankle boots, which also have a row of white buttons down the side we can see. Her near hand is raised with her index finger hooked in the handle of a green watering can, and she holds two daisies by her side in her other hand. She stands on a path flecked with ivory white, pale purples, greens, and pink that curves up and to her left. A bush with emerald and pine-green leaves dotted with pink blooms fills the lower left corner. Behind her, green grass runs back to meet a profusion of pink, purple, and poppy-red plants and flowers that run along the top edge of the composition. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Renoir. 76.”

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Auguste Renoir
Date
1876
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 100 x 73 cm (39 3/8 x 28 3/4 in.) framed: 125.7 x 97.5 x 6.9 cm (49 1/2 x 38 3/8 x 2 11/16 in.)
Department
CF
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

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Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Chester Dale Collection

Art Genome Taxonomy

8 tags

Subject Matter

  • Childhood Both · 99%

    The work’s title and catalog description identify a young girl, who is visibly depicted as the central figure.

  • Flora Both · 99%

    The catalog describes a garden filled with plants and flowers, which are visibly distributed across the background and foreground.

Styles and Movements

  • Impressionism Visual · 94%

    The image shows loosely blended, visible brushwork, broken color, and an outdoor treatment of light consistent with Impressionism.

Visual Qualities

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 93%

    The composition contains saturated and luminous blues, greens, reds, pinks, and whites, especially in the dress, bow, flowers, and garden.

Medium and Techniques

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 100%

    The catalog identifies the medium as oil on canvas.

  • Painting Metadata · 100%

    The museum classification identifies the object as a painting.

  • Large Brushstrokes/Loose Brushwork Visual · 93%

    The foliage, flowers, dress, and path are rendered with loose, painterly strokes rather than sharply bounded forms.

Time Periods

  • 19th Century Art Metadata · 100%

    The supplied catalog dates the work to 1876, placing it within nineteenth-century art.

Source & rights

Auguste Renoir. A Girl with a Watering Can. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

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