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Lot Essay
In his still-lifes Renoir could concentrate purely on the coloristic and formal concerns. As he told Albert André, "I just let my brain rest when I paint flowers... When I am painting flowers, I establish the tones, I study the values carefully... The experience I gain in these works, I eventually apply to my (figure) pictures" (quoted in W. Gaunt, Renoir, Oxford, 1982, p. 32). In a discussion of his working process, Renoir recounted:
Walking through the garden, I pick flower after flower and gather them one after another as they come in my arm. Then I go into the house with the intention of painting them. I arrange them according to my fancy - and what a disappointment: they have lost all of their magic in the arrangement. But what has happened? The unconscious arrangement made as I pick them, based upon the impulse of taste that leads me from one flower to the next, has been replaced by a willed arrangement. This is influenced by memories of bouquets that have long since wilted but whose charm has stayed in my memory and guides me in putting together the new bouquet. Renoir said to me, 'When I have arranged a bouquet in order to paint it, I look at it from every angle and remain standing at the side I hadn't thought of'. (Quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 274)
Walking through the garden, I pick flower after flower and gather them one after another as they come in my arm. Then I go into the house with the intention of painting them. I arrange them according to my fancy - and what a disappointment: they have lost all of their magic in the arrangement. But what has happened? The unconscious arrangement made as I pick them, based upon the impulse of taste that leads me from one flower to the next, has been replaced by a willed arrangement. This is influenced by memories of bouquets that have long since wilted but whose charm has stayed in my memory and guides me in putting together the new bouquet. Renoir said to me, 'When I have arranged a bouquet in order to paint it, I look at it from every angle and remain standing at the side I hadn't thought of'. (Quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 274)