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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue raisonné from François Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
Renoir spent over a month in Guernsey between September and October 1883. He painted approximately fifteen pictures on the island, including such acknowledged masterpieces as Enfants au bord de la mer à Guernsey (Barnes Foundation, Merion). All of the Guernsey pictures appear to represent views of the bay and the beach of Moulin Huet, at the east end of the island's rocky south coast and within walking distance of his lodgings at St. Peter Port.
In a letter written from Guernsey to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, Renoir wrote enthusiastically: 'I've found myself a charming beach here which is quite unlike our Normandy beaches...They bathe here among the rocks, which serve as cabins since there is nothing else. This mixture of men and women clustered on the rocks is charming. It feels more like being in a Watteau landscape than being in the real world. So I have a source of motifs that are real, graceful and which may be of use to me' (quoted in N. Wadley (ed.), Renoir - A Retrospective, New York, 1987).
Renoir spent over a month in Guernsey between September and October 1883. He painted approximately fifteen pictures on the island, including such acknowledged masterpieces as Enfants au bord de la mer à Guernsey (Barnes Foundation, Merion). All of the Guernsey pictures appear to represent views of the bay and the beach of Moulin Huet, at the east end of the island's rocky south coast and within walking distance of his lodgings at St. Peter Port.
In a letter written from Guernsey to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, Renoir wrote enthusiastically: 'I've found myself a charming beach here which is quite unlike our Normandy beaches...They bathe here among the rocks, which serve as cabins since there is nothing else. This mixture of men and women clustered on the rocks is charming. It feels more like being in a Watteau landscape than being in the real world. So I have a source of motifs that are real, graceful and which may be of use to me' (quoted in N. Wadley (ed.), Renoir - A Retrospective, New York, 1987).