Pyeongye
A breeze is coming off the river. Beyond the railing, branches sway, and behind them blue water and boats flicker. A young woman in a red hat sits on a chair. In front of her stands a little girl in a hat covered with flowers. Her cheeks are pink, and her big blue eyes look straight at us.
The painting is Two Sisters (On the Terrace), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. On the dark green tub in the lower right corner you can read his signature, "Renoir. 81." The terrace belonged to the Restaurant Fournaise in Chatou, a village on the Seine just west of Paris. Renoir thought it was the ideal place to enjoy nature and good company, away from the city.
The brightest colors in the picture are not in the faces. Look at the lower left corner.
A woven basket is packed with balls of yarn. Deep blue, grass green, scarlet, pink, white. On each ball, the brush curls around and around, following the way the thread is wound. Something like a red ribbon is tied to the basket's handle. The girl rests her hand lightly on its rim.
Now let your eyes travel up to the top of her head.
A whole bouquet seems to sit on the brim of her hat. Pink roses, white petals with yellow centers, and a burst of red. Below the flowers, a band of blue wraps around the hat. These are almost exactly the colors in the basket. Renoir tied the flowers above her head to the yarn at her fingertips with the same colors.
A basket holding one color next to another looks a lot like a painter's palette. It is as if the paints Renoir mixed for this canvas had been dropped straight into the scene. Even the small spray of flowers pinned to the older girl's jacket repeats the same pink and blue.
Renoir also used two kinds of brushwork. He painted the two faces smoothly, with strokes you can hardly see. The river, the boats, and the blossoming trees behind them are made of quick, light touches that blur together. The faces are crisp. The world around them shimmers.
Renoir showed this painting at the Impressionist exhibition of 1882. It is one of the last pictures he set at this restaurant. He painted Luncheon of the Boating Party at the same spot, and for that one his close friends posed for him.
Here is the twist. Despite the title, these two were not sisters. Renoir paid two unrelated models to pose together. The older one wears the blue flannel outfit that women wore for boating on the river.
