Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
by
Pierre-August Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was one of the major figures of French Impressionism. This painting is currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Georges Charpentier was a wealthy and well-connected publisher in late 19thC France who, together with his wife, hosted frequent gatherings of cultural and intellectual figures at their home. They were also long-time supporters of Renoir. This portrait features his wife, Marguerite, and their two children, Georgette (age six), and Paul (three). (Yes, it looks like there are two young girls in this painting, but well into the 19th century it was not uncommon for young boys to be dressed as girls.) The family's Landseer Newfoundland, Porthos, was named for the largest and most blustering of the Three Musketeers, as portrayed by Alexandre Dumas in his 1844 novel.
This painting is mentioned in a curious article in the New York Times of July 24, 1988, in a pieces by Michael Brenson entitled "Faces in the Shadows," which examines a number of paintings, including this one, and finds that there are "secondary images," usually faces, which may be found in these paintings and which serve as a sort of commentary on the subject of the overall painting. This articles mentions the Newfoundland in this painting twice: once in a general description of the work which mentions "Georgette, who is staring dreamily into space as she sits sidesaddle on a their Newfoundland dog, a resigned but not altogether willing chariot." The second mention, indirect, comes when the writer claims there is a "feline" image resting on the lap of Mme. Charpentier and argues that image creates "an amusing sense that this apparition may be the real subject of the dog's discontent." Hmmmmm......