Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary

Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary – the chin resting on a hand

Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1877. The original measures 56.0 x 46.0 cm, is recorded under inventory number Ж-3405 and is held by the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Our art reproduction Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary is a hand-painted painting in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 60 x 70 to 120 x 150 cm.

Rose-coloured skin against a green ground

A young woman leans forward and rests her chin on her right hand. Reddish-brown hair frames her face loosely; her dress is low-cut and blue-green, with pink at the shoulder, and a thin gold bracelet is at her wrist. The ground is not a room but a warm pink surface run over with loose blue-green arabesques. The signature and date stand at the upper left.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. In this portrait the difference is easy to see: the face is built from thin, soft layers, the ground from broad, quick strokes of oil colour laid side by side with a brush. The paint keeps that difference in thickness, 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 portrait is warm, in pink and green tones, and is carried by a single face, so it holds a wall without restlessness and works well where a person can stop: a living room, a bedroom or a dressing room. Because the ground is green and undefined, the face comes forward of its own accord and the painting needs no particular lighting to be seen. For a smaller wall 65 x 80 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 90 x 110 cm, and on a large wall 110 x 130 or 120 x 150 cm works, where the face is larger than life and the scene becomes more personal rather than less. Between them stand 75 x 90 and 80 x 100 cm. Under 60 x 70 cm the difference between the pink and the green is lost in the soft passage along the cheek.

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. Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary 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: portrait of a young woman with her chin on her hand, against a green ground, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 60 x 70 cm to 120 x 150 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the ground is not a space but a colour – the green is there so the rose-coloured skin comes forward

See also:

• In the Summer
• Lise with a Parasol
• La Loge (The Theatre Box)