Tilla Durieux by Renoir in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2008

Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)

Title: Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971)

Date: 1914

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 36 1/4 x 29 in. (92.1 x 73.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960

Accession Number: 61.101.13


Gallery Label:

The famous German actress Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971) is depicted in the costume designed by Poiret that she wore in "Pygmalion." In July 1914, just prior to the outbreak of World War I, she and her husband, the art dealer Paul Cassirer, traveled to Paris to pose for Renoir. When Renoir painted this ambitious portrait, with its classicizing and pyramidal format, he was so crippled with arthritis that he had to sit in a wheelchair with his brush strapped to his hand.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...