Chez Renoir, rue Saint-Georges

In 1876 Renoir was living and working at 74 rue Saint-Georges, in the new Paris of wide boulevards south of Montmartre, and his rooms had become a meeting place for his friends. This small canvas shows one of those gatherings, a knot of men talking in the studio. Among them are the writer Georges Rivière, who would later become Renoir's first biographer, and the painter Pissarro, an older colleague from the Impressionist group. They were a year away from the third Impressionist exhibition, which Rivière would help promote. Renoir keeps the finish loose and quick, as if he had caught the conversation in passing rather than posed it.