Title: Portrait of Albert

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Portrait of Albert Cahen d’Anvers 1881 Pierre-Auguste Renoir French, Limoges 1841—Cagnes-sur-Mer 1919 Oil on canvas By the early 1880s, Renoir had achieved some success as a portraitist of the social elite. The subject here is orchestral composer Albert Cahen d’Anvers (1846–1903), a member of a wealthy banking family. Fastidiously dressed, with an elegant cigarette holder in his hand, he sits nonchalantly in an eighteenth-century armchair before a vase of dahlias and some exuberant floral wallpaper. The setting is the salon at Wargemont, a chateau in Normandy owned by the diplomat and banker Paul Berard, a devoted patron and frequent host of Renoir. An inscription at lower right specifies the location and indicates the date Renoir completed and signed the portrait: September 9, 1881.