Young Girl in a Pink-and-Black Hat

By 1891 Renoir was in his 50s and had quietly left behind the open-air Impressionism that made his name. He worked indoors now, softer and warmer, often painting young women in the elaborate hats that were high fashion in Paris. This girl is seen in profile, her eyes lowered, under a hat that is mostly black with pink flowers that pick up the flush of her cheeks. It is a small canvas, barely 16 inches tall, and it belongs to a whole run of such portraits he made through the 1890s. The background stays a soft haze of blue and green, so nothing pulls attention from the face and the hat. It reached the Met in 1964 as a gift from a New York collector, Kathryn Miller.