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拍品專文
This painting will be reproduced in the Renoir catalogue raisonn from Franois Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
La Seine Argenteuil looks back to the widespread reinterpretation of the pastoral tradition in French art, extending from Corot to Czanne, and more notably to Monet's views of this suburban village executed in the 1870s (fig. 1).
Renoir visited Argenteuil on at least three occasions in the company of Monet in 1873 and 1874, and again in the summer of 1888 when the present painting was executed. La Seine Argenteuil betrays a deliberate dissimulation of the signs of industry into the picturesque landscape. The chimneys of distant factories read like vertical extensions of the mast of the solitary sailboat, presenting an image of an unspoiled landscape for the city dwellers in search of an escape from the complications of urban life.
Despite Renoir's avowed difficulties with plein-air painting, the present work is a remarkably assured landscape. Renoir completely abandoned his smooth brushwork to return to the vibrant technique of the small strokes that he had previously used. Thus, in portraying the various facets of the landscape, the artist alters his handling of the brush so that a a sinuous single line is enough to represent the graceful sweep of a tree, while the dense underbrush in the foreground is portrayed with short staccato strokes of broken colour.
La Seine Argenteuil was purchased by John and Frances Loeb who, during the 1940s and 1950s, assembled an encyclopedic collection of modernist French paintings, extending from Manet to Matisse, and including many masterpieces such as Manet's Portrait de Manet par lui-mme, en buste, Czanne's Madame Czanne au fauteuil jaune and Van Gogh's Oleandres now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
La Seine Argenteuil looks back to the widespread reinterpretation of the pastoral tradition in French art, extending from Corot to Czanne, and more notably to Monet's views of this suburban village executed in the 1870s (fig. 1).
Renoir visited Argenteuil on at least three occasions in the company of Monet in 1873 and 1874, and again in the summer of 1888 when the present painting was executed. La Seine Argenteuil betrays a deliberate dissimulation of the signs of industry into the picturesque landscape. The chimneys of distant factories read like vertical extensions of the mast of the solitary sailboat, presenting an image of an unspoiled landscape for the city dwellers in search of an escape from the complications of urban life.
Despite Renoir's avowed difficulties with plein-air painting, the present work is a remarkably assured landscape. Renoir completely abandoned his smooth brushwork to return to the vibrant technique of the small strokes that he had previously used. Thus, in portraying the various facets of the landscape, the artist alters his handling of the brush so that a a sinuous single line is enough to represent the graceful sweep of a tree, while the dense underbrush in the foreground is portrayed with short staccato strokes of broken colour.
La Seine Argenteuil was purchased by John and Frances Loeb who, during the 1940s and 1950s, assembled an encyclopedic collection of modernist French paintings, extending from Manet to Matisse, and including many masterpieces such as Manet's Portrait de Manet par lui-mme, en buste, Czanne's Madame Czanne au fauteuil jaune and Van Gogh's Oleandres now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.