La jeune fille au cygne

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French painter who lived from 1841 to 1919, painted La jeune fille au cygne in 1886, according to Christie's. The oil on canvas measures 76 by 61 centimetres. A girl with chestnut hair and an all-white dress sits forward on a low divan, a letter in her lap. Behind her stands a golden decorated screen, at the right edge of which a crane or heron can just be made out.

Adolphe Tavernier of Paris owned the painting before the sale at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris on 6 March 1900, where the Marquise Arconati-Visconti acquired it as lot 66. Later owners, listed without dates, include Gustave Fayet at the Château d'Igny, Mme d'Andoque de Serièges of Béziers, and Wildenstein & Co. of New York. Mr and Mrs Dunbar W. Bostwick of New York owned it in 1965, and Wildenstein acquired it at an anonymous sale at Christie's in London on 4 December 1973, as lot 24.

Christie's sold it in New York on 11 November 1997, as lot 113, in an anonymous sale. Artnet's report of the sale lists an estimate of $5,000,000 to $7,000,000. Christie's lot page gives a price realised of $5,062,500 and does not say whether that figure includes the buyer's premium.