Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were friends and colleagues working within the Impressionist movement. They were initially drawn together through their mutual respect for and friendship with Paul Cézanne.

In this charcoal drawing, Renoir depicts Pissarro in a full-frontal pose. Pissarro himself commonly used this pose in his own self-portrait prints and oil paintings in the 1890s. Both Renoir’s drawing and Pissarro’s self-portraits, while lacking the more traditional tools of the trade, such as an easel or paintbrush, emphasize the eyeglasses he needed to see his reflection in the mirror and create his artwork. This accessory also appears in the Dallas Museum of Art’s Self-Portrait (1985.R.44) in the Reves Collection.

Adapted from

Amy Wojciechowski, DMA label copy, 2017.