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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.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. Among the most 'academic' of the Impressionists - a position he shared with Cézanne, another devotee of the still-life subject - Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life 'in order to teach yourself to paint quickly' (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces.
As with Cézanne, the masters of French eigteenth-century painting exerted a strong pull on Renoir. While his figure pictures looked towards Watteau and Boucher, his still-lifes found their inspiration in Chardin's unique vision. Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting: 'Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but carried on the serene simplicity of Chardin... Pale shadows, light as a breath of air, faintly ripple across the perishable jewel of a ripe fruit. Renoir reconciles extreme discretion with extreme richness, and his full-bodied density is made up, it would seem, of coloured air. This is a lyrical idiom hitherto unknown in still life, even in those of Chardin. Between these objects and us there floats a luminous haze through which we distinguish them, tenderly united in a subdued shimmer of light' (C. Sterling, Still Life in Painting from Antiquity to the Present Time, Paris, 1959, p. 100).
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.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. Among the most 'academic' of the Impressionists - a position he shared with Cézanne, another devotee of the still-life subject - Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life 'in order to teach yourself to paint quickly' (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces.
As with Cézanne, the masters of French eigteenth-century painting exerted a strong pull on Renoir. While his figure pictures looked towards Watteau and Boucher, his still-lifes found their inspiration in Chardin's unique vision. Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting: 'Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but carried on the serene simplicity of Chardin... Pale shadows, light as a breath of air, faintly ripple across the perishable jewel of a ripe fruit. Renoir reconciles extreme discretion with extreme richness, and his full-bodied density is made up, it would seem, of coloured air. This is a lyrical idiom hitherto unknown in still life, even in those of Chardin. Between these objects and us there floats a luminous haze through which we distinguish them, tenderly united in a subdued shimmer of light' (C. Sterling, Still Life in Painting from Antiquity to the Present Time, Paris, 1959, p. 100).