A Young Girl with Daisies

By the late 1880s Renoir had talked himself into a corner. For a few years he had tried a harder, more linear manner, drawing crisp outlines in the way of the old masters, and he had grown unhappy with it. In 1888 he wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel that he had gone back to his old style, soft and light of touch. This girl in a loose peasant blouse, a bunch of daisies and poppies gathered in her hands, comes straight out of that decision the following year. The paint is feathery again and the edges melt. Pictures like this, all youth and easy charm, sold well to the collectors who had found his sharper experiments cold.