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
Two young women in matching red dresses lean together over an open book. One holds the pages; the other rests a hand near her companion’s shoulder and looks down. Pierre-Auguste Renoir gives their heads and the book a close, quiet space against a plain blue background. This is the 1889 oil painting Les deux soeurs documented in Sotheby’s 2007 catalogue. [1] The “II” in this page’s address is a local label used to distinguish the site’s separate Two Sisters (On the Terrace) page. It is neither part of the auction title nor evidence that Renoir painted this work second.
Several Renoir images show two girls reading or sitting close together. Matching a familiar title to the wrong picture can turn an oil into a pastel, place a private canvas in a museum or name unidentified models. The red dresses, shared open book, tightly grouped heads and Sotheby’s 65.5 × 54.7 cm dimensions identify the precise canvas considered here.
At a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir
- Catalogued titleLes deux soeurs (The Two Sisters)
- Date1889, according to Sotheby’s
- Medium and sizeOil on canvas, 65.5 × 54.7 cm
- Signature“A. Renoir” at lower right, as catalogued
- Documented locationPrivate collection at the time of the 2007 Sotheby’s sale
- Catalogue referenceFrançois Daulte, Auguste Renoir: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint. Figures, no. 562, cited by Sotheby’s
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 YouTubeThe auction entry [1] is the principal object source. It includes physical details, earlier ownership and exhibition references. Its “present owner” means the owner in that 2007 sale catalogue; it is not a verified statement about the painting’s owner today. No current public display is established by the sources used here.
Reading as a shared action
The book sits low in the picture, yet every gesture turns toward it. The woman on the left holds or steadies its lower edge; the woman on the right follows the pages with her gaze. Their heads incline toward the same point. That triangle of faces and paper makes reading an action shared between two people, not simply an attribute added to a portrait.
Renoir crops their bodies closely. The red garments fill most of the lower half, leaving little furniture to explain the room. Against them, the book’s pale pages catch the eye. The blue wall provides a quiet, cool field behind their faces and hair. A brown strip at the left suggests the edge of an interior surface, but it does not locate the scene in a named house or prove a precise time of day.
Small differences keep the women from becoming mirror images. Their hair is gathered in distinct shapes, their faces turn at different angles, and one takes the more active position at the book while the other leans in. The closeness of their clothing and pose links them visually. The painting’s title calls them sisters, but the cited catalogue does not give their personal names or a documented family relationship. The scene can be described without assigning them an identity beyond the historical title.
The book itself is represented as an open object rather than legible text. Renoir makes enough of the pages and binding to establish what the women are doing, while leaving the content unavailable to us. Nothing in the image alone supports a claim about the work they read, a lesson being taught or a story being discussed. The artist focuses our attention on the act of looking together.
Red clothing, blue background
The red dresses occupy a remarkably large part of this small canvas. Their warm colour moves between orange, crimson and deeper brown-red, shaped by broad strokes and darker bands at the sleeves. The dark collars create a pause between dress and face. Above them, the hair is built from gold, brown and copper touches that make the two heads stand out against the blue.
Sotheby’s catalogue particularly notes the red dresses and the way Renoir blended them into a connected area of fabric. The colour does compositional work. It joins the women before we study their separate expressions, while the lighter book breaks the red field near the bottom. The blue ground, by contrast, makes the faces, hair and clothing read clearly without the clutter of a detailed room. Sotheby’s, catalogue note. [1]
Renoir varies his finish. The faces and hands are held together by soft modelling and small changes of tone. In the sleeves and skirts, longer marks let colour carry much of the form. The open book is the sharpest pale interruption, though its edges remain painterly. Looking close to the canvas image, one sees brushwork; stepping back, those marks settle into a scene of two readers. The painting depends on both experiences.
The closeness of the figures could invite a sentimental reading, but it is more useful to trace how Renoir constructed it. One arm crosses behind a shoulder, two faces lean into the same small area and a single book gives them a common point of attention. The warmth of red is reinforced by their physical proximity. Those visible choices are enough to explain the picture’s intimacy without inventing a conversation between the models.
Who were the models?
Sotheby’s says the two fair-haired models are believed to be the same women who posed for Renoir’s La Leçon de piano, painted in the same year. That is a qualified identification, not a documented name for either sitter. The catalogue connects this 1889 pairing with Renoir’s later images of girls at a piano, but related compositions need not represent the same individuals. The secure observation here is that two young women read together in matching clothes.
The recurrence of paired figures suggests Renoir was testing arrangements he could revisit. A book turns both faces downward and compresses their gestures into a small space. A piano, in related works, spreads the action across a larger object. The comparison helps explain a compositional interest, but it should not flatten different paintings into one series with known sitters and a fixed sequence of preparatory stages. Sotheby’s, Les deux soeurs. [1]
Three “Two Sisters” pictures
The best-known Renoir Two Sisters (On the Terrace) is the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1881 canvas, accession 1933.455. It shows an older girl and a younger child outdoors, with a flower basket and river landscape behind them. The Art Institute’s scholarly catalogue [2] records its 100.4 × 80.9 cm size, signed 1881 date and long history with dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Those figures, setting and dimensions differ from the closely cropped book-reading pair of the privately catalogued 1889 oil. The two pages on this site therefore refer to separate Renoir works.
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery also has a The Two Sisters showing two red-clad readers. Its museum description [3] identifies a pastel on paper, dated circa 1889, with one young woman standing behind the other. Its colour scheme and pose are strikingly related to the oil discussed here. Yet medium and size separate them: the Bristol-associated image record [4] gives 79 × 63.5 cm for the pastel, versus Sotheby’s 65.5 × 54.7 cm oil. A related image is not the same physical work.
Descriptions of these paintings can cross over easily. “Two Sisters,” “two girls reading” and “the reading sisters” do not uniquely identify an object. Look for the medium, dimensions, setting and collection history beside a reproduction. The Chicago terrace canvas, Bristol pastel and 1889 oil share Renoir’s interest in paired figures, while each has its own record.
Documented ownership
Sotheby’s records the dealer Durand-Ruel acquiring this oil from Renoir on 8 December 1889. It passed to M. Boy in 1890, returned to Durand-Ruel at a 1904 sale, and was acquired in 1916 by Paul Cassirer and Hans Goltz and then Christian Tetzen-Lund. The catalogue subsequently lists Georges Bernheim in 1929, Baronne Thyssen in 1930, Wildenstein in 1956 and Charles R. Lachman later that year. The last entry is descent to the owner who consigned it for the 2007 sale. Sotheby’s provenance. [1]
This chain links the work to Renoir, his dealer and later collectors, and gives a more useful identity than a vague “private collection” credit alone. It does not establish what happened after the cited sale. The Sotheby’s entry also records past exhibitions, including 1921 Scandinavian venues, a 1958 Wildenstein show and the 1996 Renoir exhibition in Tübingen. These are historical exhibition records, not a schedule of present display.
Looking again
Start at the book and follow the two gazes toward it. Move outward to the nearly continuous red of their clothes, then back to the cool wall. The painting leaves the book’s words and the sitters’ names unknown, but it makes their shared attention unmistakable. That visible relationship is the centre of Renoir’s 1889 Les deux soeurs.
Renoir artworks directory
Questions about Les deux soeurs
No. Sotheby’s catalogues the work as Les deux soeurs. “II” only separates this website’s route from its page about the 1881 Chicago terrace painting.
Sotheby’s dates the oil to 1889 and records Durand-Ruel’s acquisition from Renoir on 8 December of that year.
The cited auction catalogue does not identify them by name. It cautiously suggests they may be the same models used for La Leçon de piano.
No. Chicago’s 1881 painting shows two figures outdoors on a terrace. This 1889 oil shows two women reading a book against a blue interior background.
No. Bristol describes a related circa-1889 pastel on paper, and a Bristol-associated image record gives 79 × 63.5 cm. Sotheby’s catalogues this separate work as a 65.5 × 54.7 cm oil on canvas.
Sotheby’s documented it in a private collection for a 2007 sale. The sources used here do not establish its current owner or public display location.
Discussion
What do you notice when you return to Two Sisters Ii?
How do the two downward gazes and one open book organise this small composition?
Reader Insights
How do the two downward gazes and one open book organise this small composition?
Sotheby’s catalogued this exact signed 1889 oil at 65.5 × 54.7 cm and traced it to Durand-Ruel’s December 1889 acquisition.
Which visible details separate this oil from Chicago’s terrace painting and Bristol’s related pastel?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about Renoir’s two sisters ii.
References
- Sotheby’s, Les deux soeurs, lot 43 (2007): exact object, date, medium, dimensions, signature, provenance, exhibitions and qualified model comparison View source.
- Art Institute of Chicago, scholarly catalogue of Two Sisters (On the Terrace): identification of the distinct 1881 terrace canvas View source.
- Bristol Museums, Bristol Museums, The Two Sisters View source.
- Bristol Museums, Bristol-associated image record View source.
- Wikimedia Commons, Sotheby’s-derived reproduction of the 1889 oil: exact-object 652 × 787 image marked Public Domain Mark View source.
