Young Woman in Red Dress is an 1892 painting in the Impressionist style by the leading French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This work is located in the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum in Hachioji, Japan.
Analysis of Young Woman in Red Dress
Young Woman in Red Dress (1892) is an elegant portrait by Pierre-August Renoir from his late period.
It displays a seated woman wearing a sumptuous scarlet dress the creases of which is partly lined by a gleam originating from the left of the field. She is wearing a hat, fittingly arranged with a broad, equally scarlet frill on top. She is smiling in an amused and confident manner which might, however, serve as a foil to the embarrassing oddity of being regarded as an object of beauty for the purposes of portraiture.
Her left arm is configured as if it were naturally positioned on an armrest, but no armrest is to be seen in this picture. This makes us suppose that the picture is in that respect unfinished, although it is not impossible that the woman’s degree of backward inclination has made this an acceptably comfortable posture for her. Under that hypothesis, the resting surface is her abdomen.
The shape of the woman’s head brings to mind that of Aline Charigot, Renoir’s wife and long-time model. But she is too young to be Charigot herself. Renoir may have sought out this model because of his interest in women of that appearance (an interest clearly visible in his nudes), just as the beautiful dress, the color red, and an atmosphere of hale sedateness are clearly sought in by the master, even in old age.