A Girl with a Watering Can

A Girl with a Watering Can catches a small child at her play, a subject Pierre-Auguste Renoir was beginning to cultivate alongside his portraits of women. Painted in Claude Monet’s garden at Argenteuil, the picture sets the girl, watering can in hand, among the flowers and dark green foliage that surrounded the two painters that summer. Renoir’s delight in the child’s round face and bright dress—and in the dappled light that freckles every leaf—makes the canvas a pure, sunny celebration of young life rather than a formal portrait.