Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children – three on a flowered sofa

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1878. The original measures 153.7 x 190.2 cm, is recorded under inventory number 07.122 and belongs to the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Our canvas wall art Madame Charpentier and Her Children is a hand-painted painting in oil on canvas, in eight landscape sizes from 80 x 65 to 170 x 140 cm.

Two identical pale blue dresses

A woman in an elaborate black dress with a long train sits on a flowered sofa. Beside her are two small children in matching pale blue dresses: the younger seated on the sofa, the elder on the back of a large black and white dog lying on the floor. Behind them stands a Japanese screen with bamboo and birds, and to the right a small table with flowers, fruit and a carafe. The scene is broad and settled; the eye travels from the black of the dress to the pale blue of the children’s clothes and back.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. In this subject the difference is easy to see: the black dress is not one dark surface but a run of individual strokes of oil colour with blue and brown reflections, laid side by side with a brush. The paint keeps the thickness of the load and the track of the bristles, which printed paper cannot imitate, so an oil painting on canvas reads differently under changing light than a flat printed surface does.

In the room

The format is horizontal and the scene is wide, so the painting is made for a broad wall where an upright canvas would not fill the space: above a sofa, in a dining room above a longer table, or in an entrance hall. Because the three figures are spread across the width rather than into depth, the painting completes a wall instead of piercing it, and that is why it works even where little height is left above the furniture. For a smaller wall 100 x 80 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 130 x 110 cm, and on a really broad wall 170 x 140 cm works. Between them stand 110 x 90 and 150 x 120 cm. Under 80 x 65 cm both children’s dresses merge into the flowered pattern 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. Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children 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: woman in a black dress with two children on a flowered sofa, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 80 x 65 cm to 170 x 140 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: both children wear identical pale blue dresses – small boys were then dressed just as girls were

See also:

• La Loge (The Theatre Box)
• Girls at the Piano
• The Umbrellas