A Renoir painting was removed from the Barnes’ walls last year. Now it’s coming back with brighter colors.
An old resin varnish on "The Henriot Family" was turning its blues to yellows. But that's been fixed thanks to a Bank of America grant
The Barnes Foundation removed a precious Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting from view last year for some much-needed rehabilitation.
The Henriot Family (La Famille Henriot), an oil painting completed around 1875, is an impressionist work depicting three people and two long-haired dogs relaxing in a forest. A young woman in a white dress gazes directly at the viewer while a man to her right appears to be drawing her. The central figure is Henriette Henriot, one of Renoir’s frequent models, and her admirer is the painter’s brother, Edmond Renoir.
It’s one of 181 Renoir paintings that Albert C. Barnes amassed during his lifetime, leading the Barnes Foundation to hold the largest collection of Renoir artworks in the world. He purchased the piece from art dealer Etienne Bignou in 1935 for $50,000, which amounts to about $1.17 million today.
Sitting above a doorway in the museum’s main room, The Henriot Family has long been eyed for restoration, according to WHYY. The staff brought the painting into the conservation lab in February 2025.
An old layer of resin varnish on the paint has altered the colors over time, turning them from blue and gray to yellow and green. On a microscopic level, the paint has also begun separating from the canvas and the base layer in a process called “micro-flaking.”
So far, Barnes’ associate conservator of paintings Christie Romano has reportedly put in some 200 hours studying the painting under a microscope to identify problematic areas.
The conservation efforts will remove the yellowing layer of resin to restore the original colors underneath and fix the areas most affected by micro-flaking using calcium carbonate. The project is funded by a grant of an undisclosed amount from Bank of America as part of its Art Conservation Project; the Barnes is one of 16 recipients worldwide.
Cultural institutions in Philadelphia have benefited from the bank’s conservation grants in previous years. In 2019, the bank funded the restoration of The Large Bathers by Paul Cézanne at the Barnes and The Great Bathers by Renoir at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Over the past 16 years, the Art Conservation Project has issued grants for some 275 conservation projects across 40 countries.
The Henriot Family will be back on view at the Barnes sometime in February, with its gray and blue looking brand new.