Self-Portrait

Renoir presents himself in this self-portrait as a mature and confident man. He was in his late fifties and well-established as an artist; the flowered wallpaper and his bourgeois clothes allude to a comfortable living. His health, on other hand, was poor, and the intensity of his gaze suggests an incisive investigation of the features of his face in a mirror. Renoir never exhibited this painting, and it remained in his studio until his death twenty years later.