I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch, Renoir announced to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888. Turning to the idle pastimes of young, middle-class girls, Renoir gave inimitable expression to his feeling that a picture, above all, should be something likeable, joyous and pretty-yes, pretty. There are enough ugly things in life not to add to them. These paintings, which incline toward the graceful informality of Fragonard's work and the demure naturalism of Corot's, found a ready market in the early 1890s.