 One, welcome to another barn's takeout, your daily serving of art. My name is Kailin Jewel. I am senior instructor in adult education at the Barnes Foundation, and today I wanted to spend some time talking with you about a couple of paintings in the collection by Pierre Augustre Noir, and the one that we'll spend more time talking about is the one in the center of the room here that we see in this photograph of the North Wall of Gallery 13. It was painted in 1881 by Renoir, and it is called Young Mother, and it represents a painting that is a moment in Renoir's career when he's trying out something new. But before we do that, let's look at Renoir in terms of what we're more familiar with thinking about in terms of his style, specifically. So often when we think about Renoir, and I think that this is totally normal, we think, oh, he's an impressionist artist, and he is an artist that is interested in what the impressionists were interested in, like the concept of capturing the fleeting nature of light. So let's look at another painting that's also in Gallery Number 13. So if we were standing in Gallery 13, just turn to your left. We see the West Wall, and the West Wall had wonderful paintings on it, one that my colleague Martha Lucy has already discussed in a previous Barnes Takeout, and then we have this one here called Simply on the Grass that was painted in the 1870s. And we'll look at it more closely. Here it is. Painting in the 1870s, this painting really serves as a great example of Renoir's interest in the impressionist movement, the impressionist style. And the impressionists, as I mentioned, were interested specifically in capturing the fleeting nature of light. And so what I mean by that and what they meant by that is trying to capture light with its ephemeral qualities. So when we look at a painting like this, the ephemeral qualities that you see about light are the fact that it seems like shadows are being cast over the faces of the dresses of these figures who are seated outside, very kind of standard or kind of typical type of setting for an impressionist artist. We know that they would paint on planer, they would take their canvases and their paint boxes outside. And so Renoir has done that. He's painted these two women enjoying time out, perhaps in a park. And we can see a really nice juxtaposition in the light quality that is hitting the two faces of these figures. The woman in the background appears to be in shadow, and the woman in the foreground appears to be highlighted. And if we zoom in on her cheek there, we can really see how Renoir is utilizing white paint to create those highlights on her cheek, on the area just above her eyebrows, and also on her nose right here. And all of this, again, is meant to give us the sense that if this painting were perhaps painted a second later, it would look totally different. There's something like a snapshot aesthetic about it, which is really, really interesting. So let's move back to our painting that was done a little around 10 years later, this one here, Young Mother. And let's look at it more closely. So, painted in 1881, this is a picture that is relatively simple in its composition. We've got an interior scene. We have a woman who is seated on a wooden chair that seems to have a little bit of a green cushion. She's holding a plump child in her lap who seems to be playfully chewing on his fingers or sucking on his fingers. We've got some, a basket in the background, a ceramic vessel in front of it, and the color palette here and the brushwork is remarkably clear. And that clarity is coming from the fact that this was painted in Italy. This was painted in the city of Naples in 1881 during the time when Renoir deliberately left France to go see the kind of light quality, the bright light quality of the Italian peninsula. And so he was there between the fall of 1881 into the winter of 1882. And while he was there, he painted a whole bunch of paintings, including this one. And we know that while he was in Italy, not only was he captivated by the light quality, and any of you who've been to Italy or seen photographs of Italy know how bright and vibrant the light is there. But we know that he was interested in seeing works of art by some of the great master painters from the Italian Renaissance, including artists like Raphael. And so he would have encountered paintings sort of like this one. And when we see these types of Renaissance paintings of Madonna and Child, and we look back at our young mother, we can see that Renoir was clearly inspired by Raphael and the Italian Renaissance artists in paring down compositions to their basic elements and giving them a monumentality, which is really, really interesting. So again, this is 1881. And I'll end by just noting this painting, this landscape picture right next to it, which was painted in the 1890s. And it has a more kind of soft impressionist aesthetic to it. And I show that to you and I point that out to remind everybody that these artists aren't necessarily pigeonholed into one style. Yes, Renoir is one of the most important impressionist artists in the history of art, but he didn't always paint in that purely impressionist style. And we can see that in this great juxtaposition here on the north wall of Gallery 13. So I'd encourage you to check out this room when you go to the Barnes and think about the kind of career and the style changes that happen in a prolific artist like Pierre Augustre Renoir. Thanks for joining me today and be sure to stay tuned for another Barnes Takeout. Thanks. Take care. Your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.