Les Deux Sœurs

In the spring of 1881, Renoir set up on the terrace of the Maison Fournaise, a riverside restaurant on an island in the Seine at Chatou, just west of Paris, where the city came on weekends to row and eat lunch by the water. The two figures he arranged there aren't sisters at all, and probably didn't know each other. The older one is Jeanne Darlot, an aspiring young actress; the child beside her was posed separately. What ties them together is the light coming off the river behind them, broken into the loose green and blue dabs of foliage that Renoir was painting faster and looser than almost anyone at the time. Look at the little basket on the railing, with its balls of wool in hard reds and blues. The dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought the canvas that July, before the paint was well dry, and it was he who added the title everyone now uses, On the Terrace.