RENOIR, Pierre-Auguste
(b, 1841, Limoges, d. 1919, Cagnes-sur-Mer)

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children

1878
Oil on canvas, 154 x 190 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children was one of the paintings Renoir exhibited in the Salon of 1879. The painting was commissioned by Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), a publisher in Paris, who published novels of Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, and Goncourt. Charpentier and his wife, née Marguérite-Louise Lemonnier (1848-1904) collected paintings by the Impressionists.

The two children in the painting are Georgette-Berthe (1872-1945) and Paul-Émile-Charles (1875-1895). Following the fashion of the time, the boy's clothes match those of his sister Georgette.