Oil on canvas
17 15/16 x 14 3/4 in (45.5 x 37.4 cm)
SignedBears signature (lower left)
 
One of the earliest known paintings by Renoir, completed the year after he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Portrait de femme - Berthe Poret depicts the artist's friend and lover. Painted in a neoclassical style, the portrait conveys a sense of elegance, timelessness, and restraint that not only juxtaposes the loose brushwork of Renoir's later works, but also the spirited nature of the sitter.

Renoir met Poret at dinner with a friend; the young woman had recently moved from her native Picardy to Paris, where she developed a friendship with an elderly gentleman who provided a furnished apartment in which she could live. Poret's friend suffered from health problems, which allowed Poret great latitude in her social activities. Poret and Renoir began a romantic affair; in his memoir of his father, Jean Renoir wrote, "She took Renoir to a ball. He took her into the woods at Meudon... for several months Renoir spent a good deal of time with Berthe which he would otherwise have devoted to his experiments with painting. But his shade painting brought him in good money and he could afford to indulge in this little idyl" (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, Boston, Toronto & London, 1962, pp. 83-84). Renoir himself often advised, "You do a lot of foolish things when you are young – it doesn't matter then, because you haven't taken on any responsibilities. But afterwards you'd be a fool to play around with cheap tarts instead of amusing yourself with painting" (ibid, p. 84).

Although Renoir's relationship with Poret was short-lived, this portrait serves a lasting emblem of a formative period in the artist's career, during which he explored the traditions of classical painting before settling into the Impressionist style for which he is best known.