Young Boy with a Cat 1869

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this oil on canvas, “Young Boy with a Cat”, in France during the late nineteenth century. Here we see a nude boy tenderly embracing a cat. We might ask, what are the politics of representing the figure in this way? In France at this time, the naked human figure, often derived from classical sources, had long been accepted in academic art. But Renoir belonged to a generation of artists who were exploring new ways of seeing and painting. By combining the classical nude with a scene of contemporary domestic life, Renoir blurs the boundaries between the formal conventions of the academy and the emerging aesthetics of Impressionism. To understand Renoir's choices better, we might look at exhibition records, critics' reviews, and the writings of Renoir and his contemporaries. Through such historical research, we can appreciate how art reflects and shapes cultural values.