In the Garden

Renoir painted this in 1885, the year his first son Pierre was born to Aline Charigot, the young seamstress he would later marry. She sits in a garden here while a man in a pale gray suit leans in and takes her hand. By this point Renoir had grown restless with pure Impressionism. A trip to Italy had sent him back toward firmer drawing and clearer edges, and you can feel that new tautness in the figures. He seems to have thought of the picture as something private. He kept it out of exhibitions, and for years almost no one knew the painting existed.