.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
This painting will be reproduced in the Renoir catalogue raisonné from François Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. The most "academic" of the Impressionists, Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life "in order to teach yourself to paint quickly" (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces. The present picture is a masterful example of Renoir's early achievement in still-life, an image at once subtle and enticing, distinguished by a simple, elegant composition; a lucid, harmonious palette; and a rich, luminous glow.
Painted circa 1884, Nature morte, le plat de prunes bears the unmistakable influence of Renoir's travels in Italy and North Africa during the preceding three years. The most striking characteristic of the works executed around the time of this sojourn is a heightened emphasis upon light. In a letter to Bérard from the autumn of 1881, shortly after Renoir's arrival in Italy, the painter described his artistic quest there: "to look for the sun, which I've found more or less... I'm in love with the sun and with the reflections in the water, and to paint them I would go around the world" (quoted in B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 108). And to Mme Charpentier early in 1882, he wrote of his artistic researches en plein air: "Thus having seen the outdoors so much, I ended up seeing only the great harmonies without caring any more about small details that extinguish sunlight instead of making it blaze" (quoted in ibid., p. 115). In the present work, light floods the scene, suffusing the image with a pervasive atmospheric radiance. The rich purple hues of the plums are embedded with this pale ambient light, lending a flickering iridescence to the downy surface of the fruit; light plays across the crisp white tablecloth, enriching its textural qualities, casting faint, lissome shadows in its folds; the background is awash in a vivid medley of pink, orange, yellow, and blue. At the same time, light does not dissolve contour, does not mitigate mass; instead, the plums, the plate, the tabletop seem to gain in substance and clarity from the light which filters through the canvas. As the 1880s progressed, Renoir increasingly sought to reconcile the tenets of Impressionism with the structure and permanence of the classical tradition, and early evidence of that interest is to be found in the sophisticated light effects of the present work.
Particularly significant to Renoir during his travels in Italy was exposure to the fresco paintings of antiquity and to Raphael, works which impressed the artist by their tangible forms and permeating light. Renoir's decision to visit Italy may in fact have been influenced by his discovery in the early 1880s of Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte, a fifteenth century Florentine treatise which includes an extensive discussion of fresco technique. In a letter to Mme Charpentier in 1882, Renoir recounted, "I studied the museum in Naples alot, the paintings from Pompeii are extremely interesting from all points of view, and so I stay in the sun, not to do portraits in broad daylight, but by warming up and doing alot of looking, I will, I think have gained that grandeur and simplicity of the ancient painters. Raphael, who didn't work outdoors, had nevertheless studied sunlight since his frescoes are full of it" (quoted in ibid., p. 115). And two years later, he instructed Deudon, himself then traveling near Naples, "Go see the museum in Naples. Not the oil paintings, but the frescoes. Spend your life there" (quoted in ibid., p. 115).
Ancient wall painting provided not only a general stimulus to Renoir's formal experiments but also an explicit prototype for his work in still-life. Pompeian still-life compositions removed to the Naples Museum in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries display the same attention to the aesthetic qualities of inanimate objects, to seductive effects of color, texture, and composition, as paintings like Nature morte, le plat de prunes; in a panel from the Praedia of Julia Felix (fig. 1), for instance, the Pompeian painter delights in the gold and brown of tonalities of the apples and grapes, the matte blue-grey of the pewter wine-jar, the shimmering highlights on fruit, metal and glass alike. So struck was Renoir by the legacy of Pompeii that he made two views of the Vesuvian landscape in 1881 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts); he also painted at least one still-life while visiting the region, an image of onions and garlic inscribed "Naples 1881" (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts), notable for the same delicate, ebullient touch as the present work.
Another important influence upon Renoir during the 1880s was French art of the eighteenth century. In figure painting, he sought inspiration from masters like Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher, writing to Durand-Ruel in 1885, "I've taken up again the old sweet and light way of painting... It's nothing new; it's a sequel to eighteenth-century paintings... Fragonard, but not so good..." (quoted in ibid., pp. 157-158). In still-life, he looked instead to Chardin, whose work provides a model for the diffuse light and graceful composure that imbue pictures like Nature morte, le plat de prunes (fig. 2). Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting:
Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but carried on the serene simplicity of Chardin...the main pictorial problem is the play of light over the tinted down of the fruit... Pale shadows, light as a breath of air, faintly ripple across the perishable jewel of a ripe fruit. Renoir reconciles extreme discretion with extreme richness, and his full-bodied density is made up, it would seem, of colored air. This is a lyrical idiom hitherto unknown in still life, even in those of Chardin. Between these objects and us there floats a luminous haze through which we distinguish them, tenderly united in a subdued shimmer of light (C. Sterling, Still Life in Painting from Antiquity to the Present Time, Paris, 1959, p. 100).
(fig. 1) Still-life with bowls of fruit and wine-jar, from Praedia of Julia Felix, Pompeii,
3rd quarter of 1st century AD.
Archaeological Museum, Naples.
(fig. 2) Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Panier de prunes avec noix groseilles et cerises, circa 1765, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. The most "academic" of the Impressionists, Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life "in order to teach yourself to paint quickly" (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces. The present picture is a masterful example of Renoir's early achievement in still-life, an image at once subtle and enticing, distinguished by a simple, elegant composition; a lucid, harmonious palette; and a rich, luminous glow.
Painted circa 1884, Nature morte, le plat de prunes bears the unmistakable influence of Renoir's travels in Italy and North Africa during the preceding three years. The most striking characteristic of the works executed around the time of this sojourn is a heightened emphasis upon light. In a letter to Bérard from the autumn of 1881, shortly after Renoir's arrival in Italy, the painter described his artistic quest there: "to look for the sun, which I've found more or less... I'm in love with the sun and with the reflections in the water, and to paint them I would go around the world" (quoted in B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 108). And to Mme Charpentier early in 1882, he wrote of his artistic researches en plein air: "Thus having seen the outdoors so much, I ended up seeing only the great harmonies without caring any more about small details that extinguish sunlight instead of making it blaze" (quoted in ibid., p. 115). In the present work, light floods the scene, suffusing the image with a pervasive atmospheric radiance. The rich purple hues of the plums are embedded with this pale ambient light, lending a flickering iridescence to the downy surface of the fruit; light plays across the crisp white tablecloth, enriching its textural qualities, casting faint, lissome shadows in its folds; the background is awash in a vivid medley of pink, orange, yellow, and blue. At the same time, light does not dissolve contour, does not mitigate mass; instead, the plums, the plate, the tabletop seem to gain in substance and clarity from the light which filters through the canvas. As the 1880s progressed, Renoir increasingly sought to reconcile the tenets of Impressionism with the structure and permanence of the classical tradition, and early evidence of that interest is to be found in the sophisticated light effects of the present work.
Particularly significant to Renoir during his travels in Italy was exposure to the fresco paintings of antiquity and to Raphael, works which impressed the artist by their tangible forms and permeating light. Renoir's decision to visit Italy may in fact have been influenced by his discovery in the early 1880s of Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte, a fifteenth century Florentine treatise which includes an extensive discussion of fresco technique. In a letter to Mme Charpentier in 1882, Renoir recounted, "I studied the museum in Naples alot, the paintings from Pompeii are extremely interesting from all points of view, and so I stay in the sun, not to do portraits in broad daylight, but by warming up and doing alot of looking, I will, I think have gained that grandeur and simplicity of the ancient painters. Raphael, who didn't work outdoors, had nevertheless studied sunlight since his frescoes are full of it" (quoted in ibid., p. 115). And two years later, he instructed Deudon, himself then traveling near Naples, "Go see the museum in Naples. Not the oil paintings, but the frescoes. Spend your life there" (quoted in ibid., p. 115).
Ancient wall painting provided not only a general stimulus to Renoir's formal experiments but also an explicit prototype for his work in still-life. Pompeian still-life compositions removed to the Naples Museum in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries display the same attention to the aesthetic qualities of inanimate objects, to seductive effects of color, texture, and composition, as paintings like Nature morte, le plat de prunes; in a panel from the Praedia of Julia Felix (fig. 1), for instance, the Pompeian painter delights in the gold and brown of tonalities of the apples and grapes, the matte blue-grey of the pewter wine-jar, the shimmering highlights on fruit, metal and glass alike. So struck was Renoir by the legacy of Pompeii that he made two views of the Vesuvian landscape in 1881 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts); he also painted at least one still-life while visiting the region, an image of onions and garlic inscribed "Naples 1881" (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts), notable for the same delicate, ebullient touch as the present work.
Another important influence upon Renoir during the 1880s was French art of the eighteenth century. In figure painting, he sought inspiration from masters like Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher, writing to Durand-Ruel in 1885, "I've taken up again the old sweet and light way of painting... It's nothing new; it's a sequel to eighteenth-century paintings... Fragonard, but not so good..." (quoted in ibid., pp. 157-158). In still-life, he looked instead to Chardin, whose work provides a model for the diffuse light and graceful composure that imbue pictures like Nature morte, le plat de prunes (fig. 2). Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting:
Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but carried on the serene simplicity of Chardin...the main pictorial problem is the play of light over the tinted down of the fruit... Pale shadows, light as a breath of air, faintly ripple across the perishable jewel of a ripe fruit. Renoir reconciles extreme discretion with extreme richness, and his full-bodied density is made up, it would seem, of colored air. This is a lyrical idiom hitherto unknown in still life, even in those of Chardin. Between these objects and us there floats a luminous haze through which we distinguish them, tenderly united in a subdued shimmer of light (C. Sterling, Still Life in Painting from Antiquity to the Present Time, Paris, 1959, p. 100).
(fig. 1) Still-life with bowls of fruit and wine-jar, from Praedia of Julia Felix, Pompeii,
3rd quarter of 1st century AD.
Archaeological Museum, Naples.
(fig. 2) Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Panier de prunes avec noix groseilles et cerises, circa 1765, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk.