Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont

Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont – three sisters in a bright room

Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1884. The original measures 127.0 x 173.0 cm, is catalogued as A I 969 and hangs in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Our canvas wall art Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 80 x 60 to 160 x 120 cm.

The museum’s own record names the girls: Marthe, Marguerite and Lucie, daughters of the banker and diplomat Paul Bérard. The eldest is sewing; the middle one is reading Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel’s picture book Vieilles Chansons. In 1905 Hugo von Tschudi bought the work for the Berlin gallery.

The blue-and-white striped sofa and an open book

The scene is a bright drawing room furnished in the Louis-Seize style. At the left the middle daughter sits on a blue-and-white striped chaise longue in a blue checked dress, an open book in her lap. At the centre the youngest stands in a dark dress with a white sailor collar, holding a doll. At the right the eldest sits on a cane chair in a pale pink spotted dress and sews, her head bent over the work. Behind them are a chest with an oriental cover, a bowl of red flowers and a tall window with a floral curtain, beyond which the garden shows green.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. Faces and hands are built from fine, soft strokes, while the carpet, the curtain and the dresses are laid in more broadly and fluidly. A hand-painted painting keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

The scene is bright, blue and pink, and domestic by nature, so it belongs where people sit and read: a living room, a child’s room, or a dining room. On a smaller wall 90 x 65 cm suffices, above wider furniture 130 x 100 cm; on a large wall 160 x 120 cm works, with 150 x 110 cm as the step below. Under 80 x 60 cm the faces of the three sisters merge into the stripes of the sofa.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: three sisters in a bright living room, on a blue-and-white striped sofa, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 80 x 60 cm to 160 x 120 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the room is furnished in the Louis XVI style – the scene is an exact account of a real house, not a staging

See also:

• Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children
• Young Girls in Black
• Luncheon of the Boating Party