Description
This small oil sketch reduces a woman’s head and hat to a handful of rapid, loaded strokes. A broad mass of orange-red paint, laced through with dark strokes suggesting trim or feathers, stands in for a wide hat, while beneath it a shadowed smudge of paint indicates the head and features, barely resolved into a face.
Dark, ribbon-like strokes fall below the hat, and the whole sketch sits on a warm, unified orange-brown ground that Renoir leaves largely exposed at the edges. This is Renoir working at speed, testing color and gesture rather than finished likeness, in a tiny format typical of his rapid studies.
This piece is available as a hand-painted oil reproduction or an archival canvas print, made to order in sizes true to the original small proportions, held at the Barnes Foundation.



