Listen to director and curator Colin Bailey discuss a portrait of Madeleine Adam, commissioned by her father.
In spring 1887 Hippolyte Adam, a prominent banker in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a town north of Paris, commissioned Renoir to make a portrait of his daughter Madeleine (1872–1955). Adam considered Renoir a “new, little-known artist” despite his established reputation in the Paris avant-garde. Renoir made a preliminary sketch before producing this carefully detailed, finished pastel, a process the sitter herself remembered many years later. This traditional approach, as well as Renoir’s use of pastel, a medium favored by several highly regarded eighteenth-century artists, was probably intended to appeal to the relatively conservative tastes of the client.
Madeleine Adam, 1887
Pastel and graphite
Collection of Diane B. Wilsey.
In May 1887, Renoir exhibited six works at the prestigious Galerie George Petit in Paris, two of which were pastel portraits which critics called “exquisite,” and the work of a master. His monumental Great Bathers, however, received mixed reviews. Just a few weeks later, Renoir accepted a commission to make portraits of the two daughters of Hippolyte Adam, a banker in Boulogne on the northern coast of France, who might have seen the artist’s work in the Paris exhibition. Madeleine Adam was fourteen at the time, and many years later she recalled Renoir’s process as he worked on her portrait: first he tacked a white cloth on to the wall to hide the eclectic décor of her family’s sitting room, then he made a preliminary sketch in red chalk—a previously unknown work that reappeared on the art market in spring 2025—and finally, having established the basic composition, he started on a new sheet of paper with pastels to produce the final portrait. The resulting image captures a sense of Adam’s youthful self-assurance with what she aptly described as “sparkling facture.” Renoir had traveled to Boulogne for several days on at least two separate occasions to complete the portraits, and had painted other images of landscapes and flowers during his stays, but Monsieur Adam refused to buy any other works from him, having been advised not to do anything foolish by acquiring what was seen as “frightful” paintings. This speaks to Renoir’s still-avant-garde status in the eyes of many traditional collectors.