The impressionists liked to reflect in their portraits a private atmosphere, trying to show just the captured moment. The portrait of Madame Charpentier and her daughters is a sample of that. The little girls look like dolls, very sweet indeed. They are the most important part of the portrait.

Renoir created many paintings of children. He had a gift for representing the softness of a child's fresh skin.

Renoir painted portraits of his friends, commissioned paintings and many others using professional models. They are almost all women and these sold very well. In "Woman Reading", the white paper of the book reflects the yellow light of the sun from underneath her face and extends clarity in several directions into her face and hair.

A person in the sun: that was a pictorial problem for the impressionists.

Another usual motive was the female nude. The best one, the half nude picture of Anna (1875), looking like Aphrodite coming out of the sea. Her body is covered in long hair. It has several points of light and many colour details and violet and green shadows. Never before did a painting so accurately represent the fusion of human nude with light and nature. The critics did not like the painting.
It was too cool! However, Caillebotte bought it.

Renoir continues ...