Femme au chat

Renoir painted this around 1875, in the years when he and a handful of friends were first showing their bright, loosely brushed pictures to a Paris public that mostly disliked them. Their first group exhibition had opened in 1874 to mocking reviews. Work like this is part of his reply, no story and no lesson, just a young woman in a striped wrap half asleep with a cat held warm against her, painted for the plain pleasure of fur and cloth and skin. He gives all three the same soft, feathery handling. The picture stayed in private hands until 1950, when an American couple gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington.