Girl with a Fan

The young woman with the fan is Alphonsine Fournaise, whose family kept a riverside restaurant at Chatou, just outside Paris, where the boating crowd gathered on Sundays. Renoir spent long stretches there in the early 1880s and painted her more than once. She leans on the railing in his famous Luncheon of the Boating Party. He had no interest in rank or status for a portrait like this. What he wanted was the freshness of a young face, the flush of the cheeks, the shine in the eyes, all built from loose, quick strokes. The red of the fan and the ribbon at her throat carry the whole picture.