Le Premier Pas

By 1876 Renoir had rooms on the rue Cortot in Montmartre, taken largely for the overgrown garden behind them. That was the year of the Moulin de la Galette, the big dance canvas his friends helped carry down the hill each working day, and of The Swing, painted among those same trees. Domestic subjects ran alongside all of it. Here a small child is being walked forward on its own feet for the first time, held up from behind, with the greenery around them broken into loose dabs. He was 35 and still poor, selling mostly to a handful of friends and small collectors. This canvas went into private hands and stayed there for well over a century. It came to auction in London for the first time in 2002, where it sold for about 6.7 million dollars.