Description
This small, rapidly worked sketch shows the head and shoulders of a bearded man, painted with an almost impatient energy. Thick, tangled dark hair frames a face built from short, urgent strokes of ochre, orange and rose, while a full dark beard spills down over the collar in loose, scribbled marks. The eyes are set deep in shadow, giving the face a brooding, inward focus even amid the sketch’s rough handling.
The background is left largely as pale, chalky white and blue, with a few loose gestural swirls of blue and gold in the upper corner that read as unfinished shorthand rather than a resolved setting. The dated 1875 signature sits at the lower edge. Renoir’s brush moves fast here, laying colour directly and leaving canvas texture visible throughout, closer to a study than a finished portrait.
This piece is offered as a hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas or as an archival giclee canvas print, reproducing the loose brushwork of the sketch held in the Simonow collection. It is a reproduction, not the original work.



