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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute and established from the archive funds of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this picture is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
In 1907 Renoir purchased Les Collettes, an estate at Cagnes on the Mediterranean coast just west of Nice. Over the next fifteen months, Renoir had a new house built for his family on the estate, leaving the old farmhouse untouched in an attempt to preserve the rural character of the property. The estate was to become one of the principal motifs of Renoir's landscapes and, as in the present work, he often used the farmhouse as the focus of his compositions.
Comparisons have been drawn with Monet's affinity in his later career with his gardens at Giverny, although Renoir's conception of Les Collettes was of a less cultivated and more 'human' landscape. This spirit is embraced by the present work, with the central motif of the farmhouse nestling within the trees and shrubbery, as well as the figures animating the foreground. With the inclusion of figures in the landscape, another distinction from the art of Monet suggests itself, and the influence that the eighteenth-century aesthetic held for Renoir comes to the fore.
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this picture is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
In 1907 Renoir purchased Les Collettes, an estate at Cagnes on the Mediterranean coast just west of Nice. Over the next fifteen months, Renoir had a new house built for his family on the estate, leaving the old farmhouse untouched in an attempt to preserve the rural character of the property. The estate was to become one of the principal motifs of Renoir's landscapes and, as in the present work, he often used the farmhouse as the focus of his compositions.
Comparisons have been drawn with Monet's affinity in his later career with his gardens at Giverny, although Renoir's conception of Les Collettes was of a less cultivated and more 'human' landscape. This spirit is embraced by the present work, with the central motif of the farmhouse nestling within the trees and shrubbery, as well as the figures animating the foreground. With the inclusion of figures in the landscape, another distinction from the art of Monet suggests itself, and the influence that the eighteenth-century aesthetic held for Renoir comes to the fore.