years earlier, presents a life-size image of a young woman in a green dress. More 15 surprisingly, Astruc saw Manet's Olympia as the starting point for both canvases. Paul Mantz's general comments about the 1868 Salon relate particularly closely to Renoir's Lise. Criticizing artists for mixing the genres of painting, forgetting the laws of proportion, and treating trifling subjects on an epic scale, he concluded: "The anecdote has invaded everything; a particular play of light and shade has taken on the same value as a drama, and few artists still have the ambition to 16 express a sentiment or an idea." As will be seen, apart from the differences of scale, Lise bears a close relationship in thematic terms to La Promenade. By contrast, in 1869 Renoir exhibited at the Salon a smaller, half- length figure titled In Summer: Study [FIGURE 13]. The picture's primary title links it to the familiar imagery of the seasons, but the subtitle emphasizes the 17 work's informality. Both the relaxed, inexpressive pose and the very broadly brushed background are a marked contrast to the treatment of Lise the previous year. At around the same time Renoir painted a more elaborate, larger genre scene, The Engaged Couple [FIGURE 14], but he seems not to have submitted it to the Salon jury. Perhaps this was because of the presence of the male figure, a most unusual element, as we shall see, in the modern-life paintings shown at the Salon. Here, too, some of the themes of La Promenade are anticipated, although its garden setting, indicated by the flower bed and the house at back right, is very different. There is only one fragment of contemporary evidence about Renoir's attempts to sell his genre paintings in these years. In autumn 1869 he wrote to Overleaf: Frederic Bazille: "I have put Lise and Sisley on show at Carpentier's. I will try to Figure 13 Pierre-Auguste Renoir. get a hundred francs out of him, and I am going to put my woman in white up for In Summer: Study, 1868. Oil on canvas, 85 x auction; I'll take what I can get for it—it doesn't matter." The Engaged Couple 59 cm (33V2 x 23V4 in.). may well be the painting shown at Carpentier's; the "woman in white" is pre- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer sumably Lise from the 1868 Salon.18 At this time it was a common practice for an Kulturbesitz Nationalgalerie, artist to put his own work up for public auction at the Hotel Drouot in Paris.19 A I 1019. Marie-Charles-Edouard Carpentier had become the partner of the Figure 14 long-established dealer Armand-Auguste Deforge in 1856 and took over the Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The Engaged Couple, business in the i86os. Deforge had made a reputation from the 18405 onward for circa 1868. Oil on can- vas, 105 x 75 cm (41% promoting la pemture de fantaisie, domestic-scaled genre paintings often x 29V2 in.). Cologne, 20 Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, inspired by Venetian art and the Rococo of the eighteenth century. The fact WRM 1199. I?