Lot Essay
This painting will be reproduced in the Renoir catalogue raisonn from Franois Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
After 1900, Renoir and his family spent each winter and spring on the Mediterranean, eventually deciding to settle in Cagnes in 1907. While this move was undoubtably a result of Renoir's decline in health, it also accommodated a shift in his art towards a more classical style. Painted in 1905 on one of Renoir's increasingly rare visits to Paris, the entire composition of Vue du Sacr-Coeur is bathed in the soft, warm light of the Mediterranean. Barbara E. White writes:
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Renoir's style continued to develop as it had during the previous decade in an integration of classicism and Impressionism. Tangible forms are surrounded by a warm atmosphere created by expressive brushstrokes of vibrant color and sparkling light. Classical feelings of weightiness and universality are blended with Impressionist feelings of movement and joyfulness (B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 217).
With the Sacr-Coeur depicted in the distance, two young girls play in this idyllic setting surrounded by lush, green foliage which fills the canvas. In 1908, J. F. Schnerb described Renoir's late landscapes in a review of a Durand-Ruel exhibition of Renoir's and Monet's work:
M. Renoir more and more loves his canvas being full and sonorous. He loathes empty spaces. Every corner in his landscapes offers a relationship of colors and values chosen with a view to the embellishment of the surface. His recent studies of the Provenal landscape have led him 'to transpose the themes furnished by nature into the most sonorous color range and to assemble the largest possible number of elements in the canvas, like a musician who ceaselessly adds new elements to his orchestra' (quoted in J. House, Renoir 1880-1919, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, pp. 276-277).
After 1900, Renoir and his family spent each winter and spring on the Mediterranean, eventually deciding to settle in Cagnes in 1907. While this move was undoubtably a result of Renoir's decline in health, it also accommodated a shift in his art towards a more classical style. Painted in 1905 on one of Renoir's increasingly rare visits to Paris, the entire composition of Vue du Sacr-Coeur is bathed in the soft, warm light of the Mediterranean. Barbara E. White writes:
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Renoir's style continued to develop as it had during the previous decade in an integration of classicism and Impressionism. Tangible forms are surrounded by a warm atmosphere created by expressive brushstrokes of vibrant color and sparkling light. Classical feelings of weightiness and universality are blended with Impressionist feelings of movement and joyfulness (B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 217).
With the Sacr-Coeur depicted in the distance, two young girls play in this idyllic setting surrounded by lush, green foliage which fills the canvas. In 1908, J. F. Schnerb described Renoir's late landscapes in a review of a Durand-Ruel exhibition of Renoir's and Monet's work:
M. Renoir more and more loves his canvas being full and sonorous. He loathes empty spaces. Every corner in his landscapes offers a relationship of colors and values chosen with a view to the embellishment of the surface. His recent studies of the Provenal landscape have led him 'to transpose the themes furnished by nature into the most sonorous color range and to assemble the largest possible number of elements in the canvas, like a musician who ceaselessly adds new elements to his orchestra' (quoted in J. House, Renoir 1880-1919, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, pp. 276-277).