A painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir will be unveiled at the National Gallery of Ireland later today.
Jeune femme en blanc lisant(Young woman in white reading) is the first piece of work by the French artist to become part of the major summer exhibition Impressionist Interiors.
The oil painting was purchased at auction at Sotheby's Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York for 333,000 euro in November 2007.
Painted in 1873 just prior to the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, the piece depicts a fashionably dressed woman seated on a sofa absorbed in a book. The sitter is unknown, although it may be Camille Monet, wife of the artist Claude Monet.
Renoir — who lived from 1841 to 1919 — was a leading artist in the development of the impressionist style.
His work will be on view to the public from tomorrow before becoming part of the main exhibition, which opens in May.
Impressionist Interiors also features well-known paintings by all the major artists such as Manet, Monet, Gauguin, Degas, Vuillard, Bonnard and Pissarro.