Pêcheuses de moules à Berneval

Renoir painted this on the Normandy coast in the summer of 1879, at a fishing village called Berneval. Scenes of hardy fisherfolk were a Salon staple, but Renoir turned the usual formula around and put the children in front, a barefoot girl leading the way with a basket while the grown-up work goes on behind. It is a big canvas, nearly six feet tall, made at a point when he was courting the official Salon rather than showing with his Impressionist friends. The American collector Albert Barnes wanted it for decades and finally bought it in 1942, the last Renoir he ever added to his enormous collection outside Philadelphia.