Georgette Charpentier sentada

In 1876 Renoir was in his mid-thirties and still scraping by, an Impressionist the official Salon had little time for. That year the Paris publisher Georges Charpentier, who printed Zola and Flaubert and ran a lively literary salon, gave him a small trial job: a portrait of his four-year-old daughter Georgette, seated. Renoir passed the test. The commission opened the door to the Charpentier household and its powerful guests, and two years later he painted the mother and children in a large canvas that the Salon finally accepted and hung well, a turning point in his fortunes. This first, smaller picture of the little girl is now in the Artizon Museum in Tokyo.