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Lot Essay
This painting will be reproduced in the Renoir catalogue raisonn from Franois Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
Paul Durand-Ruel, the great supporter of Impressionism, so believed in the work of Renoir, Monet, Pissarro and their contemporaries that he pushed himself to the brink of financial disaster twice in the space of fifteen years. Two bankruptcies drove him to arrange a speculative exhibition of Impressionism in New York in 1886. It was this exhibition, mounted as a last resort, that saved him and soon after enabled him to open a gallery in New York in 1888 which remained active until 1950.
Many important pictures remained in the family either with Paul or with his three sons who were so instrumental in running the Paris and New York galleries. The present painting, Buste de jeune fille, was part of the collection of Paul's grand-daughter, Marie-Louise (fig. 1).
Paul Durand-Ruel, the great supporter of Impressionism, so believed in the work of Renoir, Monet, Pissarro and their contemporaries that he pushed himself to the brink of financial disaster twice in the space of fifteen years. Two bankruptcies drove him to arrange a speculative exhibition of Impressionism in New York in 1886. It was this exhibition, mounted as a last resort, that saved him and soon after enabled him to open a gallery in New York in 1888 which remained active until 1950.
Many important pictures remained in the family either with Paul or with his three sons who were so instrumental in running the Paris and New York galleries. The present painting, Buste de jeune fille, was part of the collection of Paul's grand-daughter, Marie-Louise (fig. 1).