Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Femme nue s'essuyant

细节
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Femme nue s'essuyant
signed 'Renoir' (lower right)
oil on canvas
21¾ x 18 1/8 in. (55 x 46 cm.)
Painted circa 1909
来源
Ambroise Vollard, Paris.
M. de Galéa, Paris.
出版
A. Vollard, La vie et l'oeuvre de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1919 (full page illustration facing p. 48 titled 'Après le Bain').
A. Vollard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paintings, Pastels and Drawings, San Francisco, 1989, no. 246 (illustrated p. 62).

拍品专文

From around 1900 Renoir's choice of models reflected his interest in Classicism and the examples of Titian and the Venetian school as he became more attracted to the voluptuous female figure, as seen in the present painting.

"In technique, composition and subject-matter Renoir was deliberately moving away from any suggestion of the fleeting or the contingent... towards a more tender vision of woman...When Berthe Morisot visited him...he told her that 'the nude seemed to him to be one of the most essential forms of art'" (J. House, Exh. Cat., Renoir, Boston, 1985, p. 242).

Acknowledging the charm of Renoir's nudes, the critic Camille Mauclair commented in 1903 "Renoir's woman...is a luxuriant, firm, healthy and naïve woman with a powerful body, her eyes wide open...her lips blood red" (C. Mauclair, Impressionists, London, 1903, p. 16).

"He is truly the painter of women, in turn gracious and moved, knowing and simple, always elegant with an exquisite sensitiveness of eye...Not only does he portray delightfully the plastic forms of the body, the delicate modulations, the dazzling tones of young complexions, but he also paints the form of the soul and that inner music and captivating mystery which emanate from the woman" (O. Mirbeau, 'Notes sur l'Art: Renoir', La France, Paris, 8 December 1884).