Seated Young Girl with Hat 1900

Pierre-Auguste Renoir made this oil on canvas painting, “Seated Young Girl with Hat,” sometime in the late 19th century. The image of a working class woman in a field is typical of the Impressionists’ desire to represent everyday life. Although the woman is wearing a fashionable hat, the setting suggests she’s performing some kind of agricultural labor, perhaps during a break. By the 1870s, the French Academy was losing its grip on the art world. Artists started organizing outside the Salon system and exhibiting independently. Impressionists like Renoir wanted to show modern subjects and paint them in a modern way. Paintings like this challenge traditional hierarchies. Instead of depicting historical or mythological scenes, Renoir's attention to the working classes elevated the status of the common person. Analyzing the social context of art helps us to understand not only the artist’s intentions, but also the values and beliefs of the society in which they lived. Researching exhibition histories, reviews, and other primary source documents, we can begin to understand the social and institutional forces at play.