Explore the History of this artwork, La Parisienne (Renoir painting).
La Parisienne was completed in 1874 and was first displayed, along with five other oil paintings and a pastel from Renoir, at the studio of Nadar in the April of that year at the first Impressionist exhibition. Also featured at the studio were works by Monet, Cézanne, Pissarro, Sisley and other leading lights of the embryonic art movement.
The model for the painting was French actress Henriette Henriot (1857–1944), who at the time of the sitting was sixteen years old. Henriot was an unknown in 1874, though she would later become well known appearing at the Théâtre de l'Odéon and starred in productions for André Antoine's Théâtre Libre. Henriot would sit for at least eleven other paintings for Renoir, including La Source (1875) and The Page (1876).
La Parisienne was bought in the year of its first exhibit in 1874. Art collector and fellow Impressionist artist Henri Rouart paid Renoir 1,500 francs for the painting, hanging it at his home at the Rue de Lisbonne in Paris. Rouart loaned the painting to a Parisian exhibition in 1892, where it was displayed under the title La Dame en Bleu. When Rouart died in early 1912 his collection was broken up and auctioned. La Parisienne was sold in Paris in December 1912 where it was jointly purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel and the American art dealership Knoedler. Durand-Ruel later sold his share of the painting to Knoedler and the work was displayed at the National Portrait Society exhibition at Grosvenor Square in London in 1913. It was purchased from the exhibition in March by Welsh art collector Gwendoline Davies where it was transferred to the Holburne of Menstrie Museum in Bath. The painting was bequeathed to the National Museum Wales in 1952 where it has remained to date. It is popularly known in Wales as The Blue Lady. It is on display in gallery 16 of the National Museum, Cardiff.
Nadar Knoedler Holburne of Menstrie Museum Théâtre de l'Odéon Gwendoline Davies Henriette Henriot Paul Durand-Ruel Impressionist oil painting Bath André Antoine Théâtre Libre Henri Rouart