In six different prints, three etchings and three lithographs, Renoir treated this theme of two young girls side by side, one of them pinning on the other’s hat. His models are known to have been Julie Manet, daughter of Berthe Morisot and her husband Eugene Manet, the artist’s brother, and her cousin Paulette Gobillard. Julie was born in 1878. At the time when this lithograph was done, she was nineteen, but since the lithograph was based on some earlier drawings, Julie must have been about fifteen or sixteen when Renoir, attracted by the girl’s charming attitude, made his original studies, on which, almost at once, he based a painting and a pastel, both dated 1893.

In the following year he took up the subject in three prints. It also appears, curiously enough, in the small drypoint On the Beach at Berneval, where we find two girls with long hair wearing the same hats. Julie Manet is portrayed on the right in one etching and on the left in the other two. She is shown twice on the right in the two larger lithographs, and on the left in the small one, which is a remarque on the Seated Bather (Delteil No. 36).

The two larger lithographs on this theme, together with the Children Playing with a Ball, were the first lithographs of large size that Renoir undertook. Ambroise Vollard having asked him for a lithograph, Renoir in 1897 drew The Pinned Hat, first version (24 3/8 x 19 1/2 in.). Two hundred impressions of it were printed in black, in sanguine and in brownish green, after the pulling of a few trial proofs.

Then for Vollard, in the following year, Renoir drew a second, so-called “wash” version of the same subject (24 3/8 x 19 1/4 in.), for after transferring his drawing to the stone, he went on to rework it with tusche, which he had not done in the case of the first. There were several printings of this second version. After the trial proofs, over five hundred impressions were printed, including one hundred in black, fifty in sanguine and fifty in bistre. To this, according to information provided by Henri Petiet, may be added some fifty impressions in mauve on rice paper and another printing in blue.

Then, taking one of the impressions in black and white, Renoir heightened it with colors, undoubtedly pastels, and Clot transferred these colors to the stones. Of this color lithograph there were two printings (a fact unrecorded by Delteil): an edition of about one hundred impressions, the one represented in this book and to our thinking the better of the two; and another of about fifty impressions, to which Renoir added further colors.

The spaces between Julie Manet’s arms and between her arm and her face were now filled up in raw green; her dress on the lower right was reworked in orange ochre; and the flowers on her cousin’s hat were emphatically colored in red, yellow and green. The printing of this second edition called for eleven stones, corresponding to the eleven tonalities employed by Renoir, including black and grey.

Publication excerpt from Impressionist Prints, by Roger Passeron.