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Lot Essay
Painted during the last years of the Nineteenth Century, Le chapeau fleuri demonstrates Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s masterful approach to the human figure. Once described by Camille Pissarro as the ‘portraitiste éminent’ of Paris, the artist was renowned for imbuing his sitters with a vivacity and sense of spirit unparalleled among his contemporaries. He was ‘a society portraitist to rival Whistler or Sargent’ Colin B. Bailey has noted, though for Renoir, society extended beyond the well-heeled beau monde, painting shopkeepers, performers, society’s grande dames, and their children (‘Portrait of the artist as a portrait painter,’ in Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age, exh. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1997, p. 4).
Set against a luminous, shimmering ground, the female protagonist of Le chapeau fleuri sits, dressed in a diaphanous white blouse, her back to the viewer. In her hands is a small bouquet of bright flowers that mirror the ones decorating her elegant hat. Behind her stands a young boy, his fingers casually draped across the back of her giltwood chair, while daubs of bright green and yellow in the background suggest verdant foliage. It is believed that she may be Lucie Gallimard, the wife of the pivotal Impressionist collector Paul Gallimard. Renoir was a particular favourite of Gallimard, and the artist painted a small number of portraits of Lucie. The boy is thought to be the couple's second son, Gaston, who grew up to found the incredibly successful Gallimard publishing house. The present work was perhaps commissioned to honour Gaston's First Communion, a Catholic rite of passage for a young child, as it has previously featured in exhibitions and literature under the title La première communion.
In the painting, Renoir pays lavish attention to his two sitters’ clothing, delicately evoking lace and wool. Like many of his Impressionist colleagues, he was deeply drawn to fashion, and his depiction of contemporary clothing allowed him to display a virtuosic handling of paint. It was hats, however, that truly captivated Renoir, becoming one of his most favoured motifs. The artist Suzanne Valadon, who occasionally modelled for Renoir, remembered how much he ‘loved women’s hats’: ‘He put heaps of them on my head… He took me to the milliners’ shops; he never ceased buying lots of hats’ (quoted in J. House and M. Lucy, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, London, 2012, p. 245). Indeed, Renoir’s models were often given extravagant head-wear – then the height of fashion – complete with tumbles of ribbons and silk decorations. Adorned with an abundance of cascading blossoms, the hat portrayed in Le chapeau fleuri is a triumphant focal point within the composition, the vibrant pink and orange petals glowing brightly against its wearer’s dark hair.
But even as Renoir was attuned to contemporary fashion and trends, his paintings reveal little about their specific geographic locations. Although he often worked en plein air with the hope of capturing a natural play of light and shadow, Renoir was less invested in representing the modern world than many of his contemporaries. Instead, he elected to create idealised backdrops, places that Robert L. Herbert described as a ‘kind of utopia’ (Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, New Haven, 1988, p. 190). While Le chapeau fleuri was probably painted in a small garden near to Renoir’s home, the absence of detail suggests a pastoral idyll, a perfume scented arcadia that belongs to no specific time or place.
This embrace of idealism on the part of the artist owed much to the stylistic changes that were transforming Renoir’s practice. At the time that Le chapeau fleuri was painted, he was transitioning away from the linear classicism that had defined his earlier output, and embracing a new colourism in the vein of Peter Paul Rubens. Softness would come to define his paintings, the nascent threads of which can be seen in Le chapeau fleuri, particularly in the woman’s gossamer white blouse and handful of flowers.
Unlike more traditional portraits, Renoir sought sincerity and naturalness in his sitters, a sense underscored in the present work. Although the woman is the main subject of the painting, she has turned away from the viewer and closed her eyes. The boy, too, seems far from posed, a small smile gracing his otherwise placid face. Like Renoir’s other paintings, Le chapeau fleuri is a dimensional portrait, one that captures a specific, real moment in its sitters’ lives. He has, in short, endeavoured to paint their true being. As the journalist Théodore Duret observed of the artist, ‘Renoir excels at portraits. Not only does he catch the external features, but through them he pinpoints the model’s character and inner self’ (The Impressionist Painters, 1878; quoted in Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 120).
Le chapeau fleuri was purchased by Edmond and Jeanne Lévy-Ditisheim in the 1950s, and has remained in their family collection for the last seventy years. The Lévy-Ditisheims were devoted art lovers – their collection also included Renoir’s Le Canotier de Bougival – and keen patrons of the Kunstmuseum Basel, where between 2002 and 2022, Le chapeau fleuri was on long-term loan.
Set against a luminous, shimmering ground, the female protagonist of Le chapeau fleuri sits, dressed in a diaphanous white blouse, her back to the viewer. In her hands is a small bouquet of bright flowers that mirror the ones decorating her elegant hat. Behind her stands a young boy, his fingers casually draped across the back of her giltwood chair, while daubs of bright green and yellow in the background suggest verdant foliage. It is believed that she may be Lucie Gallimard, the wife of the pivotal Impressionist collector Paul Gallimard. Renoir was a particular favourite of Gallimard, and the artist painted a small number of portraits of Lucie. The boy is thought to be the couple's second son, Gaston, who grew up to found the incredibly successful Gallimard publishing house. The present work was perhaps commissioned to honour Gaston's First Communion, a Catholic rite of passage for a young child, as it has previously featured in exhibitions and literature under the title La première communion.
In the painting, Renoir pays lavish attention to his two sitters’ clothing, delicately evoking lace and wool. Like many of his Impressionist colleagues, he was deeply drawn to fashion, and his depiction of contemporary clothing allowed him to display a virtuosic handling of paint. It was hats, however, that truly captivated Renoir, becoming one of his most favoured motifs. The artist Suzanne Valadon, who occasionally modelled for Renoir, remembered how much he ‘loved women’s hats’: ‘He put heaps of them on my head… He took me to the milliners’ shops; he never ceased buying lots of hats’ (quoted in J. House and M. Lucy, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, London, 2012, p. 245). Indeed, Renoir’s models were often given extravagant head-wear – then the height of fashion – complete with tumbles of ribbons and silk decorations. Adorned with an abundance of cascading blossoms, the hat portrayed in Le chapeau fleuri is a triumphant focal point within the composition, the vibrant pink and orange petals glowing brightly against its wearer’s dark hair.
But even as Renoir was attuned to contemporary fashion and trends, his paintings reveal little about their specific geographic locations. Although he often worked en plein air with the hope of capturing a natural play of light and shadow, Renoir was less invested in representing the modern world than many of his contemporaries. Instead, he elected to create idealised backdrops, places that Robert L. Herbert described as a ‘kind of utopia’ (Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, New Haven, 1988, p. 190). While Le chapeau fleuri was probably painted in a small garden near to Renoir’s home, the absence of detail suggests a pastoral idyll, a perfume scented arcadia that belongs to no specific time or place.
This embrace of idealism on the part of the artist owed much to the stylistic changes that were transforming Renoir’s practice. At the time that Le chapeau fleuri was painted, he was transitioning away from the linear classicism that had defined his earlier output, and embracing a new colourism in the vein of Peter Paul Rubens. Softness would come to define his paintings, the nascent threads of which can be seen in Le chapeau fleuri, particularly in the woman’s gossamer white blouse and handful of flowers.
Unlike more traditional portraits, Renoir sought sincerity and naturalness in his sitters, a sense underscored in the present work. Although the woman is the main subject of the painting, she has turned away from the viewer and closed her eyes. The boy, too, seems far from posed, a small smile gracing his otherwise placid face. Like Renoir’s other paintings, Le chapeau fleuri is a dimensional portrait, one that captures a specific, real moment in its sitters’ lives. He has, in short, endeavoured to paint their true being. As the journalist Théodore Duret observed of the artist, ‘Renoir excels at portraits. Not only does he catch the external features, but through them he pinpoints the model’s character and inner self’ (The Impressionist Painters, 1878; quoted in Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 120).
Le chapeau fleuri was purchased by Edmond and Jeanne Lévy-Ditisheim in the 1950s, and has remained in their family collection for the last seventy years. The Lévy-Ditisheims were devoted art lovers – their collection also included Renoir’s Le Canotier de Bougival – and keen patrons of the Kunstmuseum Basel, where between 2002 and 2022, Le chapeau fleuri was on long-term loan.