Femme au corsage blanc, Jeanne Samary by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1841-1919 | French

Femme au corsage blanc, Jeanne Samary
(Woman in a white blouse, Jeanne Samary

Initialed "AR" (lower right)
Pastel on paper

Among Renoir's most famous works are those that capture the ladies of his inner circle in his signature style. This vibrant pastel from 1879 depicts the young Jeanne Samary, Renoir’s favorite subject and most important muse at the height of his career. Compared to his 4,000 paintings, the artist made exceptionally few pastels—only about 150 total—making this luminous work an extraordinary Renoir rarity.

Samary was one of the most captivating figures of late 19th-century Paris. An iconic actress at the Comédie-Française, her fame rivaled that of the great Sarah Bernhardt. Beginning in 1876, Renoir created dozens of portraits of Samary, and she also appeared in all three of the artist’s most important paintings from this pivotal period—Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876), La balançoire (1876) and The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–81). Renoir’s close friend and biographer, Georges Rivière, noted that “no portrait ever gave Renoir greater satisfaction than the ones he made of Samary.”

This magnificent pastel perfectly embodies this bond between Renoir and Samary. Vivid and spontaneous, the work captures an intimate moment, with Samary’s blouse delicately falling over her shoulder. Renoir typically reserved pastel for his portraits of friends and family, as it allowed him to capture their true essence with speed and ease.

The year this pastel was created, 1879, was also one of the most important years of Renoir’s career. He entered the prestigious Salon of 1879, where four of his portraits were accepted, including a full-length masterpiece of Jeanne Samary. This pastel stands as a testament to this pivotal chapter for Renoir, portraying the muse who shaped his groundbreaking vision. 

Renoir’s portraits of Jeanne Samary are exceptionally scarce, with most already held in prestigious museum collections, including the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Similar pastels of Samary have commanded millions at auction—among some of the highest prices for Renoir’s works on paper. Importantly, the artist’s pastels are getting recent museum attention, with the major 2025-2026 exhibition organized by the Musée d’Orsay and the Morgan Library, Renoir Drawings.

This work is accompanied by its certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, and it will be included in their forthcoming digital catalogue raisonné.

Drawn 1879

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Paper: 22 1/4" high x 14 1/4" wide (56.5 x 36.2 cm)
Frame: 36 3/4" high x 28 1/4" wide x 3" deep (93.4 x 71.8 x 7.6 cm)

Provenance:
Ambroise Vollard, Paris, acquired from the artist (as of 1907)
Étienne Bignou, Paris (as “Jeanne Samary”)
Lafarge, Paris
Victor Hélin, Paris
Succession Victor Hélin, c. 1945
M. and Mme Schmit, acquired from the above, 2009
Private Collection, Paris
M.S. Rau, New Orleans