Girl with a Hoop

Auguste Renoir

National Gallery of Art

A young girl with pale skin and long brown hair looks at us as she braces a tall, wooden hoop with one hand by her hip in this vertical painting. The girl stands close to us with her body angled to our right, and she looks at us from the corners of her dark blue eyes. Her delicate nose, rosy cheeks, and closed, rose-pink lips are set in a heart-shaped face. She has wavy, chestnut-brown hair that falls loosely around her shoulders. Bangs brush across her forehead, and her hair is pulled back in half, tied in a pale blue ribbon. She wears a sky-blue dress with a ruffle around the wide collar. The long sleeves are rolled back over her wrists, and the dress is tied at the waist with an aquamarine-blue sash tied into a bow at her lower back. The knee-length skirt flares out from the waist. She wears ice-blue socks pulled halfway up her shins and black, low-heeled Mary Jane-style shoes tied with bows over the arches. One foot turns to rest on the bottom edge of the wooden hoop she braces with her left hand, farther from us. She holds a short stick by her side with the other hand. The ground around her is painted with blended areas of muted topaz blue, peach, and canary yellow. The top third of the background is a loosely painted garden, with lime and spring-green leaves, and a cluster of shell-pink flowers to our right. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “Renoir. 85.”