Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Reading Desk Mat

Reading (La Lecture), around 1891 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, oil on canvas. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Limoges, 1841 - Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919) was a French Impressionist painter. In 1891 Renoir painted a series of scenes under the title La Lecture, showing two girls reading together outdoors. Here a blonde girl with a ribbon in her hair and a dark-haired girl, her hand raised to her chin, bend over the same open book against a leafy background. The book gives the two young companions a simple reason to sit close together, in the quiet, intimate mood of his early-1890s scenes of youthful pastimes. Such genre scenes, painted around the time of his Young Girls at the Piano, found a ready market with collectors.