page_title: Augusta Holmès
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Augusta Holmès / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: The Daughters of Catulle Mendès, Huguette (1871–1964), Claudine (1876–1937), and Helyonne (1879–1955) Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer) Date: 1888 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 63 3/4 x 51 1/8 in. (161.9 x 129.9 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1998, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 Hoping to recapture the success he had achieved with Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children at the Salon of 1879, Renoir sought to paint the daughters of his friend Catulle Mendès. In addition to the girls’ manifest charm, he undoubtedly counted on the notoriety of their bohemian parents to gain attention: their father was a Symbolist poet and publisher, and their mother was the virtuoso pianist Augusta Holmès. Renoir completed the commission in a matter of weeks and immediately exhibited the large canvas in May 1888, but the response to his new manner of painting, with its intense hues and schematized faces, was unenthusiastic.
context_page_description: Augusta Holmès was a French composer of Irish descent. At first she published under the pseudonym Hermann Zenta. In 1871, Holmès became a French citizen and added the accent to her last name. She herself wrote the lyrics to almost all her songs and oratorios, as well as the libretto of her opera La Montagne Noire and the programmatic poems for her symphonic poems including Irlande and Andromède.
context_section_description: Holmès never married, but she cohabited with the poet Catulle Mendès; the couple had five children, including:
  Huguette Mendès (1871–1964)
  Claudine Mendès (1876–1937)
  Helyonne Mendès (1879–1955)
  Holmès bequeathed most of her musical manuscripts to the Paris Conservatoire.
caption: A portrait of Holmès' daughters, Huguette, Claudine, and Helyonne, by Auguste Renoir, 1888, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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