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Lot Essay
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
In the early 1890s, Renoir commented that "in literature as well as in painting, talent is shown only by the treatment of the feminine figures" (quoted in Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p.16). The painter had occasionally depicted the female nude during the early years of his career, but it was not until he returned from a tour of Italy in 1881 that he made it the principal theme of his art. Inspired by Raphael's frescoes in Rome, and the Pompeian frescos that he saw in Naples, Renoir began to execute the single, monumental nude figures in outdoor settings that remained a mainstay in his oeuvre through the last three decades of his career. Baigneuse nue assise belongs to the group of open-air female bathers that Renoir executed in the 1890s. Richard Shone has written, "The works of the 1890s are forerunners of Renoir's pagan goddesses and nymphs, which found their fullest expression in the Paris Bathers, completed shortly before the artist's death" (ibid., p.57). Indeed, Renoir commented at the end of his career, "Perhaps I've been painting the same three or four paintings throughout my life! What is certain is that since my trip to Italy, I've been working away at the same problems" (quoted in ibid., p. 15).
This painting depicts a young woman with golden hair, seated on a rock as she dries her ankle with a white towel, a theme that appears in other works, such as Baigneuse se coiffant, 1893 (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Baigneuse, 1895 (Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris). Renoir focused on the nude, reducing the background to a generalized woodland setting with blue water, tree trunks, and sketchy undergrowth. Her pose and arrangement of clothes and drapery suggest that Renoir painted this work in the studio, yet the naturalness of the scene reflects the painter's experience with open-air painting. Although devoid of contemporary references, the scene is not entirely classical either. It does seek to disguise the studied artifice of a posed model. Richard Shone has written, "In Renoir's earlier series of nudes, from the 1880s (such as Baigneuse blonde, 1881; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.), the seated figures, painted in the studio, seem somewhat disconnected from their settings; there is little attempt at unifying outdoor daylight, and the relation of figure to ground is sometimes awkward. But as Renoir's investigation of the motif continued, he gradually made a virtue of this apparent dislocation. The figures become more abstracted from the world, inhabitants of an Arcadian vision that, fully aware of sensual delights, nevertheless transcends everyday reality" (R. Shone, A Very Private Collection: Janice H. Levin's Impressionist Pictures, New York, 2002, p. 57).
Renoir attributed his synthesis of the quotidian and the classic to the French tradition of painting. "With all modesty," declared Renoir, "I consider not only that my art descends from a Watteau, a Fragonard, a Hubert Robert, but also that I am one with them" (quoted in J. Renoir, Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks, New York, 1989, p. 66). Around 1897, Renoir combined individual bather figures, such as that seen in the present painting, into groups, producing canvases such as Trois baigneuses au crabe (fig. 1), which is reminiscent of Watteau's groupings of bathers in spirited and seemingly spontaneous combinations. Commenting on Renoir's link between these nudes and artistic tradition, John House has written, "The Impressionism of the mid-1870s had fused figure with ground, treating it as if it was part of the landscape; in the Bather paintings, Renoir was deliberately rejecting this process, by reinstating the traditional humanistic view of the figure as the painter's prime object of attention, at the same time as he was re-establishing the links between his own art and the figurative tradition in European painting" (op. cit., p. 259). Over the years, Renoir's sylvan nudes morphed into the colossal, vital female figures that inspired Pablo Picasso, whose Nu assis s'essuyant le pied, 1921 (fig. 2) reflects his purchase of works by Renoir, including a seated bather and a large drawing of a nude, through Ambroise Vollard in 1919. Remarking on classicism, Renoir stated, "The simplest themes are the eternal ones. A nude woman is Venus or Nini [Lopez, one of Renoir's favorite models], whether she is emerging from the waves of the sea or rising from her bed. Our imagination can conceive of nothing better" (quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 265).
The present painting displays the soft, fluid brushwork and nuanced palette that characterize Renoir's style of the 1890s. Turning away from the cool colors, firm contours, and clear distinction between figure and background that characterize his nudes from the mid-1880s, Renoir organized his compositions with related colors on the canvas to achieve formal unity. The painter articulates the bather's flesh in predominantly pink and white, which he modeled tonally using largely colorless shadows that the Nabis painter Maurice Denis described as "neutral tones which connect the tints and make the most of their brilliance" (quoted in op. cit., p. 280). Renoir employed sanguine for preparatory studies such as Nu debout tenant un linge (Baigneuse sortant du bain), 1896 (fig. 3), as the red chalk mirrors the warm tones that he gave their flesh in his canvases.
Although many of Renoir's bathers sometimes pose in a show of modesty, the blonde bather's un-selfconscious absorption in her task suggests her unawareness of the viewer. John House has written, "Poses of these types complement the youthful girlish types which Renoir favored for his models in these years, seeking to evoke a sense of innocence. Critical commentaries on Renoir's art between the early 1890s and around 1905 were to make much of this vision of female beauty" (ibid., p. 259). In 1896, the critic Gustave Geffroy described these young bathers as "instinctive beings, at the same time children and women, to whom Renoir brings a convinced love and... observation. They are a wholly individual idea, these young girls who are sensual without vice, oblivious without cruelty. They exist like children and like flowers which absorb the air and dew" (quoted in ibid., p.264). Commenting on the sensual character of his nudes, Renoir told the painter Albert André, "I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it, if it is a landscape, or to stroke a breast or a back, if it is a figure" (quoted in ibid., p. 14).
(fig. 1) Renoir, Trois baigneuses au crabe, circa 1897. Cleveland Museum of Art. BARCODE 20627577
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Nu assis s'essuyant le pied, pastel, Fontainebleau, Summer 1921. Private collection. BARCODE 20627560
(fig. 3) Renoir, Nu debout tenant un linge (Baigneuse sortant du bain), 1896. Private collection. BARCODE 20627591
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
In the early 1890s, Renoir commented that "in literature as well as in painting, talent is shown only by the treatment of the feminine figures" (quoted in Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p.16). The painter had occasionally depicted the female nude during the early years of his career, but it was not until he returned from a tour of Italy in 1881 that he made it the principal theme of his art. Inspired by Raphael's frescoes in Rome, and the Pompeian frescos that he saw in Naples, Renoir began to execute the single, monumental nude figures in outdoor settings that remained a mainstay in his oeuvre through the last three decades of his career. Baigneuse nue assise belongs to the group of open-air female bathers that Renoir executed in the 1890s. Richard Shone has written, "The works of the 1890s are forerunners of Renoir's pagan goddesses and nymphs, which found their fullest expression in the Paris Bathers, completed shortly before the artist's death" (ibid., p.57). Indeed, Renoir commented at the end of his career, "Perhaps I've been painting the same three or four paintings throughout my life! What is certain is that since my trip to Italy, I've been working away at the same problems" (quoted in ibid., p. 15).
This painting depicts a young woman with golden hair, seated on a rock as she dries her ankle with a white towel, a theme that appears in other works, such as Baigneuse se coiffant, 1893 (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Baigneuse, 1895 (Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris). Renoir focused on the nude, reducing the background to a generalized woodland setting with blue water, tree trunks, and sketchy undergrowth. Her pose and arrangement of clothes and drapery suggest that Renoir painted this work in the studio, yet the naturalness of the scene reflects the painter's experience with open-air painting. Although devoid of contemporary references, the scene is not entirely classical either. It does seek to disguise the studied artifice of a posed model. Richard Shone has written, "In Renoir's earlier series of nudes, from the 1880s (such as Baigneuse blonde, 1881; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.), the seated figures, painted in the studio, seem somewhat disconnected from their settings; there is little attempt at unifying outdoor daylight, and the relation of figure to ground is sometimes awkward. But as Renoir's investigation of the motif continued, he gradually made a virtue of this apparent dislocation. The figures become more abstracted from the world, inhabitants of an Arcadian vision that, fully aware of sensual delights, nevertheless transcends everyday reality" (R. Shone, A Very Private Collection: Janice H. Levin's Impressionist Pictures, New York, 2002, p. 57).
Renoir attributed his synthesis of the quotidian and the classic to the French tradition of painting. "With all modesty," declared Renoir, "I consider not only that my art descends from a Watteau, a Fragonard, a Hubert Robert, but also that I am one with them" (quoted in J. Renoir, Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks, New York, 1989, p. 66). Around 1897, Renoir combined individual bather figures, such as that seen in the present painting, into groups, producing canvases such as Trois baigneuses au crabe (fig. 1), which is reminiscent of Watteau's groupings of bathers in spirited and seemingly spontaneous combinations. Commenting on Renoir's link between these nudes and artistic tradition, John House has written, "The Impressionism of the mid-1870s had fused figure with ground, treating it as if it was part of the landscape; in the Bather paintings, Renoir was deliberately rejecting this process, by reinstating the traditional humanistic view of the figure as the painter's prime object of attention, at the same time as he was re-establishing the links between his own art and the figurative tradition in European painting" (op. cit., p. 259). Over the years, Renoir's sylvan nudes morphed into the colossal, vital female figures that inspired Pablo Picasso, whose Nu assis s'essuyant le pied, 1921 (fig. 2) reflects his purchase of works by Renoir, including a seated bather and a large drawing of a nude, through Ambroise Vollard in 1919. Remarking on classicism, Renoir stated, "The simplest themes are the eternal ones. A nude woman is Venus or Nini [Lopez, one of Renoir's favorite models], whether she is emerging from the waves of the sea or rising from her bed. Our imagination can conceive of nothing better" (quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 265).
The present painting displays the soft, fluid brushwork and nuanced palette that characterize Renoir's style of the 1890s. Turning away from the cool colors, firm contours, and clear distinction between figure and background that characterize his nudes from the mid-1880s, Renoir organized his compositions with related colors on the canvas to achieve formal unity. The painter articulates the bather's flesh in predominantly pink and white, which he modeled tonally using largely colorless shadows that the Nabis painter Maurice Denis described as "neutral tones which connect the tints and make the most of their brilliance" (quoted in op. cit., p. 280). Renoir employed sanguine for preparatory studies such as Nu debout tenant un linge (Baigneuse sortant du bain), 1896 (fig. 3), as the red chalk mirrors the warm tones that he gave their flesh in his canvases.
Although many of Renoir's bathers sometimes pose in a show of modesty, the blonde bather's un-selfconscious absorption in her task suggests her unawareness of the viewer. John House has written, "Poses of these types complement the youthful girlish types which Renoir favored for his models in these years, seeking to evoke a sense of innocence. Critical commentaries on Renoir's art between the early 1890s and around 1905 were to make much of this vision of female beauty" (ibid., p. 259). In 1896, the critic Gustave Geffroy described these young bathers as "instinctive beings, at the same time children and women, to whom Renoir brings a convinced love and... observation. They are a wholly individual idea, these young girls who are sensual without vice, oblivious without cruelty. They exist like children and like flowers which absorb the air and dew" (quoted in ibid., p.264). Commenting on the sensual character of his nudes, Renoir told the painter Albert André, "I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it, if it is a landscape, or to stroke a breast or a back, if it is a figure" (quoted in ibid., p. 14).
(fig. 1) Renoir, Trois baigneuses au crabe, circa 1897. Cleveland Museum of Art. BARCODE 20627577
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Nu assis s'essuyant le pied, pastel, Fontainebleau, Summer 1921. Private collection. BARCODE 20627560
(fig. 3) Renoir, Nu debout tenant un linge (Baigneuse sortant du bain), 1896. Private collection. BARCODE 20627591