Renoir studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris and was part of the first cluster of impressionist artists, along with Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). The painters of this trend sought to capture the ephemera — that which quickly changes its features, such as modern life in the cities. In general, this fluidity appears in landscapes or cityscapes, with their light in constant movement. Renoir, however, gave great importance to the depiction of human figures, which appear in portraits, scenes of cafés and bars, or female nudes. The dozen paintings by the artist in MASP’s collection span nearly his entire career, from youth to old age. The girl in Portrait of Marthe Bérard (1879) was the first of the four children of Paul Bérard (1833‑‑1905) painted by Renoir which also was his first commissioned portrait. The Bérard family were friends as well as collectors of the artist. This painting, later reproduced on a smaller scale, was constructed with quick, uniform brushstrokes, nearly without the different treatment generally accorded to figure and background, which used to be valued in the European pictorial tradition. Marthe’s face has the same treatment as other parts of the canvas, constructed with a few ocher and blue hues.
— MASP Curatorial Team
By Luciano Migliaccio
Daulte (1974) gives us information about the model and the relationship between the painter and the Bérard family. Paul Bérard was an embassy secretary, banker, and business manager. He met Renoir in 1879 thanks to collector Charles Deudon, who had bought The Dancer, currently in Washington. Bérard had as many as thirty-two works by Renoir, thus becoming one of his most important collectors. He had one son, André, born in 1868, and three daughters. The portrait of the eldest daughter, Marthe, was his first commission to Renoir. Born in 1870, she was nine years old when she sat for the artist. Marthe Bérard – The Little Girl with the Blue Sash on display at Masp marks the beginning of a long-standing friendship between Renoir and the Bérard family. The artist was a frequent guest not only at their Paris home, but also at their country house in Wargemont, near Dieppe. It was there, in the summer of that same year, 1879, that Renoir painted another portrait of Marthe titled Young Girl Fishing Shellfish (Geneva, the Darier Collection), of which he made a replica for the girl’s grandmother (New York, private collection). The portrait of the second daughter of the Bérards, Margot, dates from this same period. In the following summer, Renoir painted the portrait of little André, and in 1883 that of the youngest daughter, Lucie. The first two girls are again depicted, together with their brother, in a study of eight children’s heads, dated 1881, in the Clark Institute of Williamstown and in Children in Wargemont (1884, Berlin, Staatliche Museum) featuring only the girls. This painting was the last of the series of works commissioned by Bérard until his death in 1905, which includes other portraits, allegories, and still lifes.
Camesasca (1989, p. 154) claims that the work on display at Masp has an outstanding place in Renoir’s production owing to the choice of colors and the delicacy of the execution, as he resumes the same hues, almost like a variation on a chromatic theme, similar to variations on a musical theme. The cut of the portrait, in full length and in an upright position, reminds us particularly of English 18th-century portraiture, while the colors and the strokes of the brush bear the influence of Titian and Rubens.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998
