Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children is a large oil on canvas group portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, signed and dated 1878, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which acquired it in 1907.

The publisher Georges Charpentier, who brought out the novels of Émile Zola, and his wife Marguerite, née Lemonnier (1848–1904), hosted a Friday salon at their house on the rue de Grenelle that drew writers, artists, musicians and politicians. From 1876 to 1879 the couple were Renoir's principal patrons. After smaller portraits of Madame Charpentier and of her daughter, Georges Charpentier commissioned this larger picture for 1,000 francs; Renoir worked on it from September to October 1878, over many sittings.

Madame Charpentier, in a black silk gown by the House of Worth, sits in a small private salon decorated with Japanese hangings and bamboo furniture. Her son Paul-Émile-Charles (1875–1895) sits beside her on the sofa, while her daughter Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) is perched on Porthos, the family's Newfoundland dog. The two children wear matching blue dresses and hairstyles, following the custom of dressing young boys and girls alike. The black and white of the dog's coat echoes the mother's dress.

Renoir chose not to take part in the fourth Impressionist exhibition and sent the canvas to the Salon of 1879, where it was well received; Camille Pissarro wrote that Renoir had a great success at the Salon and seemed to be launched. The painting was shown again in Brussels and at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1886. After the deaths of both parents it was bought for the Metropolitan in April 1907 for 84,000 francs, with Roger Fry and the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel involved in the purchase. Marcel Proust, who saw it at the Charpentiers', alluded to it in Time Regained, and John Singer Sargent knew it from the Salon before painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. It measures 153.7 × 190.2 cm.