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Lot Essay
This work 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.
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
The present work depicts the summer cottage of Blanche Pierson (1842-1919), a French stage actress, famed beauty, and member of the Comédie-Française (fig. 1). Le châlet de Blanche Pierson à Pourville is thought to be Renoir's attempt to curry favor with Pierson by painting her house in Pourville, a small resort and fishing village two and a half miles west of Dieppe. Renoir sought to win a commission for her portrait, but he never painted the actress herself. Portrait commissions had been Renoir's sole livelihood between 1876 and 1880, but by 1882, the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was buying the painter's works on a regular basis. Freed from immediate financial concern, Renoir may have wished to paint Pierson to repeat the success of his portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary, 1878 (coll. Hermitage; St Petersburg) at the Salon of 1879.
While primarily an image of a particular residence, the present painting also displays groups of people at leisure. The figures are clearly vacationers enjoying a carriage ride or a chat with friends. Addressing Renoir's use of figures in this work, Richard Shone has written, "Whereas colleagues such as Pissarro and Sisley tended to include in their landscapes figures indigenous to the working and agricultural communities where they painted, Renoir's figures are often vacationers or people finding leisure and refreshment on a day's excursion to the country. This is particularly true, of course, of his beach scenes and views of the Normandy coast and the Channel Islands" (exh. cat. op. cit. 2002-2003, p. 53). The pleasant atmosphere of this work reflects a statement that Renoir wrote to a colleague: "I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it" (quoted in ibid., p. 14).
(fig. 1) Nadar, Photograph of Blanche Pierson, from François le Champi at the Comédie-Française, circa 1890.
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
The present work depicts the summer cottage of Blanche Pierson (1842-1919), a French stage actress, famed beauty, and member of the Comédie-Française (fig. 1). Le châlet de Blanche Pierson à Pourville is thought to be Renoir's attempt to curry favor with Pierson by painting her house in Pourville, a small resort and fishing village two and a half miles west of Dieppe. Renoir sought to win a commission for her portrait, but he never painted the actress herself. Portrait commissions had been Renoir's sole livelihood between 1876 and 1880, but by 1882, the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was buying the painter's works on a regular basis. Freed from immediate financial concern, Renoir may have wished to paint Pierson to repeat the success of his portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary, 1878 (coll. Hermitage; St Petersburg) at the Salon of 1879.
While primarily an image of a particular residence, the present painting also displays groups of people at leisure. The figures are clearly vacationers enjoying a carriage ride or a chat with friends. Addressing Renoir's use of figures in this work, Richard Shone has written, "Whereas colleagues such as Pissarro and Sisley tended to include in their landscapes figures indigenous to the working and agricultural communities where they painted, Renoir's figures are often vacationers or people finding leisure and refreshment on a day's excursion to the country. This is particularly true, of course, of his beach scenes and views of the Normandy coast and the Channel Islands" (exh. cat. op. cit. 2002-2003, p. 53). The pleasant atmosphere of this work reflects a statement that Renoir wrote to a colleague: "I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it" (quoted in ibid., p. 14).
(fig. 1) Nadar, Photograph of Blanche Pierson, from François le Champi at the Comédie-Française, circa 1890.