by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 2, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
A girl sits in a chair, holding a small book close to her face. Her deep red dress fills much of the picture, while a striped curtain rises behind her. She looks into the pages rather than out at us. Renoir’s Girl Reading, painted around 1890, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as 98.297. The museum’s Beck Collection catalogue gives this exact title, collection number and a detailed account of its colour, composition and later ownership. MFAH object record [1]; Beck Collection catalogue essay. [2]
“Girl Reading” can describe several Renoir works. This restored page concerns the Houston canvas in the red dress. It is separate from Orsay’s earlier La Liseuse, from the tiny NGA Young Girl Reading and from Renoir’s pictures of two readers. The old blank URL alone did not identify an object; the title and the documented Houston source support the choice made here. The painting should be referred to by museum and accession as well as title when a comparison could confuse them.
At a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir
- TitleGirl Reading
- Datec. 1890
- MediumOil on canvas
- Size33.6 × 41.3 cm
- CollectionMuseum of Fine Arts, Houston, 98.297, John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection
- SitterNot identified in the museum record
Watch: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Explore a Montmartre dance, a gathering beside the Seine and the drawings behind Renoir’s paintings.
Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker discuss Renoir’s 1876 Montmartre dance scene, its light and its crowds.
Watch on YouTubeReading within a room of colour
The book is small compared with the girl and her dress. It rests between her hands, its bright pages immediately beside her face. The viewer can recognise the activity but cannot read its contents. The museum catalogue describes her mouth as slightly open, an observation that may suggest engagement but does not tell us whether she is speaking or simply concentrating. The painting leaves the story of the book outside the frame. Beck Collection catalogue essay. [2]
Renoir places the figure before a curtain striped green, yellow and orange. The dress is a saturated red edged with black, and its colour appears again in her cheeks and the chair’s upholstery. The strong red-and-green contrast gives the small picture energy. Her face and hair are painted with shorter, gentler touches than the wider strokes of the fabric. The museum’s catalogue uses these differences in handling to explain how Renoir balances a vivid surface with an absorbed expression. Beck Collection visual analysis. [2]
Follow the shape of the chair around her. Its arms hold her within a compact space, yet Renoir does not enclose her in a rigid portrait pose. The book pulls her attention inward. The curtain supplies a patterned vertical behind the curved figure and chair. The result is an intimate, domestic scene rather than a claim about the girl’s biography. The museum does not give a name for the model, and a resemblance to another child in Renoir’s work is not proof of identity.
Fragonard and Renoir’s later style
The Beck Collection essay compares the canvas with Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Young Girl Reading of around 1769. Both subjects are immersed in a book, and both artists let energetic brushwork carry an apparently quiet image. The catalogue explicitly says Renoir probably knew Fragonard’s painting through reproductions, rather than claiming he saw the original. That is a useful comparison of subject and style, not evidence that one picture is a literal copy of the other. MFAH catalogue discussion [2]; National Gallery of Art, Fragonard’s painting. [3]
The colours also differ. The Houston essay notes that Fragonard balanced yellow and purple, while Renoir makes a stronger red and green exchange. Renoir admired eighteenth-century French painters, but this girl’s dress and curtain belong to his own late-nineteenth-century picture. A historical source can help us notice a formal affinity without requiring us to call the girl an eighteenth-century character. Beck Collection catalogue. [2]
The same essay places Girl Reading within Renoir’s gradual return to a softer and lighter touch after the more tightly drawn paintings of the mid-1880s. It makes a precise comparison with the curtain in the Musée d’Orsay’s 1892 Young Girls at the Piano: the fabric falls in straight folds here but is swagged behind the pianists. The scholar considers it the same curtain and suggests that the scenes may have been made in the same richly furnished interior. This is an interpretation of a repeated backdrop, not documentation of a particular room or evidence that the girls are the same model. MFAH catalogue, comparison with the piano painting. [2]
Which reader is this?
This is not the Orsay La Liseuse of 1874–76, which shows an older reader in a dark garment, close to an open book and without the Houston picture’s large red dress and striped curtain. It is also not the National Gallery of Art’s Young Girl Reading of about 1888, a much smaller canvas, 14.8 × 10.7 cm painted surface, in which the young child is shown in profile. Their titles are similar because reading was a recurring subject for Renoir, not because they are three records for one canvas. Musée d’Orsay, RF 3757 [4]; National Gallery of Art, 1970.17.71 [5]; MFAH, 98.297. [1]
The Houston catalogue also compares a later Child Reading with this sitter, noting similar hair and a slightly open mouth while acknowledging their different apparent ages. It does not settle whether they are the same model. The careful way to use the comparison is to observe Renoir’s repeated interest in children absorbed in books, then return to the particular pose, dress and room in 98.297. Beck Collection comparative account. [2]
Ownership and public record
The MFAH provenance lists dealers and owners from Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris by 1896 through several later collections and galleries. It records the picture at a Parke-Bernet sale on 28 October 1970, where it appeared as “La Lecture”, and says the Becks acquired it that year. The museum listed the painting in a 1974 exhibition of the Beck Collection, before Audrey Jones Beck gave it to the MFAH in 1998. The object record also notes Renoir’s signature at the lower left. These details follow the same canvas through changing ownership, exhibition and institutional custody. Some earlier provenance entries are bracketed by the museum, signaling that aspects of the chain remain under research. A title used at auction is not a second painting. MFAH provenance, exhibition and object record. [1]
The museum’s Beck Collection catalogue provides a later interpretive history as well. It connects the girl’s reading with nineteenth-century paintings of domestic life and considers how this subject complicates a purely decorative account of Renoir’s young female figures. Those are scholarly readings, not facts about which book the model held or what the artist said to her. The visible painting and its documented ownership give a firmer basis for the page. Beck Collection essay. [2]
Looking again
Begin with the white pages and follow the girl’s gaze down to them. Move from her face to the black trim and red folds of her dress. Then compare those curves with the straight striped curtain. The scene is quiet in action but lively in paint. Its exact sitter and book remain unknown; its visual relationships are there to inspect.
Renoir artworks directory
Questions about Girl Reading
This page concerns the MFAH canvas 98.297, made around 1890: a girl in a red dress reads before a striped curtain. Renoir made several other pictures of readers.
The museum does not identify the sitter or the book. Comparisons with other children painted by Renoir are suggestive but do not establish a name.
It is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, part of the John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection, accession 98.297.
No. The Orsay picture is an earlier, separate canvas, RF 3757, dated 1874–76. The Houston picture is dated c. 1890.
Discussion
What do you notice when you return to Girl Reading?
How do the small white pages compete with the much larger red dress?
Reader Insights
How do the small white pages compete with the much larger red dress?
The MFAH accession 98.297 identifies this Houston canvas among Renoir’s several reader pictures.
What does the striped curtain add to the girl’s absorbed pose?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about Renoir’s Girl Reading.
References
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Girl Reading, 98.297. Identity, medium, dimensions, provenance and current collection View source.
- Helga Kessler Aurisch, Beck Collection catalogue essay on Girl Reading. Colour analysis, Fragonard comparison and relation to other Renoir works View source.
- National Gallery of Art, Fragonard’s painting View source.
- Musée d’Orsay, Musée d’Orsay, La Liseuse , RF 3757 View source.
- Musée d’Orsay, National Gallery of Art, Young Girl Reading , 1970.17.71 View source.
- Whole-work image: Google Art Project reproduction on Wikimedia Commons, marked Public Domain; resized and recompressed. The MFAH object and catalogue pages above are cited for research rather than copied as image sources View source.
