Madame Charpentier and Her Children

Working in oil on canvas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this Madame Charpentier and Her Children in 1878. The publisher's wife sits with her daughters Georgette and Paul (dressed as a girl, then fashionable). The family dog sprawls nearby. The scene radiates bourgeois comfort and maternal warmth.

Madame Charpentier's salon was a center of Parisian intellectual life. Her patronage helped Renoir gain acceptance at the Salon, where this painting won success. The black dress against Japanese décor shows Impressionism adapting to portraiture. It hangs at the Metropolitan Museum.