Study of Renoir's Lise À L'Ombrelle

I focused on studying color in this copy of August Renoir's "Lise À L'Ombrelle" from 1867. Staying away from getting caught up in the details of her face, hands and the tree in the background, I chose to copy this painting in an attempt to understand how to paint chromatic shadows. Chromatic shadows means shadows that have color in them. You might look at a shadow and assume the shadow is just 'grey' or 'black' or 'brown' but in reality shadows are usually full of color and that is what makes a painting such as this one so rich and compelling. The shadow cast by the umbrella onto the dress is purple and blue, and the light bouncing up off the dress creates a 'reflective shadow' onto the neck and chin create. Though the subject's face is in full shadow, her flesh is still full of reds and orange. The most revealing part of this study to me was painting the subtle shadows in the sleeves of this dress that create the effect of a gauzy fabric; the warmth of the orange-pink flesh of the arms is heightened when sitting directly beside the purple-blue coolness of the shadows in the fabric, which both rely heavily on the white-cream areas to indicate bits of the actual cloth. This is so much easier to paint in oil (as Renoir did) than in watercolor. The cream-white areas are the white of the paper which I had to very careful to not cover with paint as I built up the layers of color. I painted this study slowly, in two sessions over two days, giving myself a big span of time in between to think about the plan-of-attack before putting in the darkest darks and deepest shadows.

Size: 9"x12"

2025-06-M

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