Girl in a Lace Hat is an 1891 painting in the Impressionist style by the leading French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
The oil painting depicts a young girl in a frilly lace hat posing for a portrait. This painting is in bright colors with loose brush strokes. The subject seems aloof as she is looking away from the painter.
Renoir was one of the leading members of the impressionist movement founded after the rejection of Renoir and his counterparts by the conservative Salon juries who had a monopoly on the French art market. Renoir and a couple of other artists founded the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers and organized an exhibition in rebellion. This bold step led to him being noticed by an art dealer called Paul Durand-Ruel.
In the early 1880s, Renoir became successful and began traveling and seeing the works of early painters like Raphael and Da Vinci. This made him shift from Impressionism toward Renaissance-style naturalism.
Renoir and Claude Monet discovered the art technique of en Plein air based on a scientific concept that we know today as diffuse reflection.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Girl in a Lace Hat is located in the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan.