Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille (L’Eté), 1880

Renoir’s Jeune fille (L'Eté) is a pretty pastel fantasy: a plump brunette wears a breezy white chemise and a fashionable straw hat, festooned with a thick blue ribbon.

This Impressionist goddess of summer, nestled in a flowering meadow, has adorned her hat with freshly plucked blooms.

She leans towards the viewer with a sweet, languid look, her lips gently parted.

The sensuality of her expression is underscored by the casual exposure of her bare shoulder, arms and décolleté.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille (L’Eté), 1880 | Christie's

Claude Debussy / Paul Verlaine | Clair de Lune, 1869

Clair de Lune is a French poem written by Paul Verlaine (French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement, 1844-1896) in 1869.

It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement of Debussy's 1890 Suite bergamasque of the same name.

The poem has also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré.

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer | Sérénade au clair de lune, Venise | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Femme en promenade, 1890

Pierre-Auguste Renoir demonstrated affinity toward portraiture, evidenced by its prevalence in and importance to his oeuvre.

He had a range of patrons, and in fact, his success and resultant legacy as an artist is intimately tied to his penchant for depicting women and children.

In the Paris Salon of 1879, he exhibited a family portrait of Madame Charpentier titled Portrait de Madame Charpentier et ses enfants.

Madame Charpentier was the wife of the publisher of Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and the Goncourt brothers, and this initial work spurred his popularity and resulted in an increasing number of portrait commissions following its public exhibition.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Femme en promenade, 1890 | Christie's

Henri Lebasque | Afternoon Tea on the Terrace in Sainte-Maxime, 1914

Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) first visited the French Riveria in 1906 at the suggestion of his friend Henri Manguin.

In 1924, Lebasque relocated to the region to permanently take advantage of its unparalleled light.

In the intervening years, the artist who would earn the sobriquet "Painter of Joy and Light" returned often.

In 1914, he brought his family to the town of Sainte-Maxime, about halfway between Cannes and St. Tropez.

Here, he would undertake an idyllic series of family portraits set on the terrace of their waterfront house.

Henri Lebasque | Afternoon Tea on the Terrace in Sainte-Maxime, 1914 | Christie's

Gustave Caillebotte | Les Jardiniers, 1877

Exhibited publicly only once in the past century and a half, Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848-1894) Les Jardiniers is a celebrated early example of the artist’s garden compositions, which was rediscovered in the 1990s, having remained in the same family collection for over a hundred years.

Painted in 1877, the scene depicts the well-appointed kitchen garden at the Caillebotte family’s country home in the village of Yerres, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris.

The artist was a teenager when his parents acquired the property as a summer residence, drawn by the grand, Neo-Classical style house and extensive grounds that stretched down to the banks of the nearby river Yerres.

Gustave Caillebotte | Les jardiniers, 1875 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Pan’s Party, 1879

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this florid allegorical canvas, La fête de Pan, in the summer of 1879.

Commissioned to adorn the drawing room of the Bérard family’s country home, the Château de Wargemont, La fête de Pan depicts a spring festival devoted to the ancient Greek god, Pan - a rare example of a mythological subject in Renoir’s oeuvre.

This jubilant painting combines the artist’s careful observations of nature en plein air with his imaginative fantasies of beauty, both feminine and floral.

Picasso and the still life

For Picasso, life in all its forms - its tragedies, joys, and banalities; his great loves and his children; the people, places and events that shaped him - fed his insatiable need to create.

Consequently, every one of his works is deeply autobiographical - a reflection of a time, emotion or state of mind.

Just as a portrait by the artist is never just a straightforward depiction of a sitter, so a still life is never solely a meaningless assortment of objects.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895

"I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch", Renoir wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888, full of enthusiasm for his latest efforts.

"This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting - like Fragonard, but not so good" (quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121).

Renoir's new approach represented a sea-change after the controversial Ingres-inspired method he cultivated in the previous decade.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895 | Christie's