A Girl with a Watering Can

A Girl with a Watering Can is an oil on canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, signed and dated 1876, in the Chester Dale Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The National Gallery places the picture at the moment, in 1876, when Renoir began painting anecdotal scenes of women and children, subjects in which he excelled. It shows the mature Impressionist manner adapted to figure painting: the colours keep the brightness of his landscapes, but the brushwork is more even and controlled, laid on in small, delicate touches that are finest in the child's face. Wikipedia articles in several languages repeat the tradition that it was painted in Claude Monet's garden at Argenteuil.

A little girl with curly blonde hair and a red bow stands on a pale garden path, wearing a dark blue dress trimmed with lace and a row of buttons. She holds a green watering can in one hand and two daisies in the other, against a background of lawn and flowerbeds. Various names have been put forward for the sitter, including a Mademoiselle Leclère, but the museum considers none of them convincing and suggests that Renoir painted a neighbourhood child; a girl with the same features and the same dress appears in other paintings by him.

The early history of the canvas is only partly documented. According to the museum's provenance record it may have been commissioned around 1876 for the Sellière collection in Paris; it later passed through the dealer Alexandre Rosenberg, the banker and Renoir patron Paul Bérard, and Alexandre Berthier, 4th Prince de Wagram. Chester Dale bought it through the Galerie Étienne Bignou in September 1931 and bequeathed it to the National Gallery in 1963. It measures 100 × 73 cm.