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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the Renoir catalogue raisonné from François Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute, Paris.
'Dans l'oeuvre de Renoir, peintre de figures, il faut donner une place à part au portraitiste. Aucun autre n'a aussi profondément scruté l'âme de son modèle et n'en a exprimé l'essence en quelques traits concis' (G. Rivière, 'Renoir', L'Art Vivant, 1 July 1925, p. 5).
Like Monet, Renoir had relied on portrait commissions for financial purposes throughout the 1860s. However, portraiture, for Renoir as well as for Degas, Manet and Bazille, the Impressionists who had least need of financial gain from their art, was a means of exploring aesthetic experiments as much as it was employed to analyse the physchological make-up of a sitter. Renoir, in fact, chose to present himself by his portraiture at the official Salon between 1864 and 1883 and again at his final appearance in 1890, although this is also partly due to his belief that the picture buying public were short sighted in regard to the official recognition that the Salon afforded: 'Il y a dans Paris à peine quinze amateurs capable d'aimer un peintre sans le Salon. Il y en a 80,000 qui n'achèteront même pas un nez si un peintre n'est pas au Salon. Voilà pourquoi j'envoie tous les ans deux portraits, si peu que ce soit' (P.A. Renoir, letter to Durand-Ruel, Algiers, March 1881, quoted in L. Venturi, Les Archives de l'impressionnisme, vol. I, Paris & New York 1939, p. 115). Portraits also accounted for a substantial portion of his submissions to the Impressionist exhibitions of 1876 and 1877, suggesting that it was not simply the allures of financial success that drove Renoir towards the depiction of the human face.
Jeune homme à la cravate rouge, executed in 1890, depicts a self-confident young man, posed rather formally with one arm resting on the back of his chair. His grey three-piece suit, brilliantly rendered with soft, subtle brushstrokes, is contrasted by the bold red tie which, in conjunction with the neutral background, emphasises the central part of the work and focuses the viewer's attention on the sitter's face. In the first volume of his catalogue raisonné, François Daulte suggests that, according to some, the present work depicts Renoir's nephew, Eugène, the only son of Victor-Edmond Renoir, the artist's younger brother.
'Dans l'oeuvre de Renoir, peintre de figures, il faut donner une place à part au portraitiste. Aucun autre n'a aussi profondément scruté l'âme de son modèle et n'en a exprimé l'essence en quelques traits concis' (G. Rivière, 'Renoir', L'Art Vivant, 1 July 1925, p. 5).
Like Monet, Renoir had relied on portrait commissions for financial purposes throughout the 1860s. However, portraiture, for Renoir as well as for Degas, Manet and Bazille, the Impressionists who had least need of financial gain from their art, was a means of exploring aesthetic experiments as much as it was employed to analyse the physchological make-up of a sitter. Renoir, in fact, chose to present himself by his portraiture at the official Salon between 1864 and 1883 and again at his final appearance in 1890, although this is also partly due to his belief that the picture buying public were short sighted in regard to the official recognition that the Salon afforded: 'Il y a dans Paris à peine quinze amateurs capable d'aimer un peintre sans le Salon. Il y en a 80,000 qui n'achèteront même pas un nez si un peintre n'est pas au Salon. Voilà pourquoi j'envoie tous les ans deux portraits, si peu que ce soit' (P.A. Renoir, letter to Durand-Ruel, Algiers, March 1881, quoted in L. Venturi, Les Archives de l'impressionnisme, vol. I, Paris & New York 1939, p. 115). Portraits also accounted for a substantial portion of his submissions to the Impressionist exhibitions of 1876 and 1877, suggesting that it was not simply the allures of financial success that drove Renoir towards the depiction of the human face.
Jeune homme à la cravate rouge, executed in 1890, depicts a self-confident young man, posed rather formally with one arm resting on the back of his chair. His grey three-piece suit, brilliantly rendered with soft, subtle brushstrokes, is contrasted by the bold red tie which, in conjunction with the neutral background, emphasises the central part of the work and focuses the viewer's attention on the sitter's face. In the first volume of his catalogue raisonné, François Daulte suggests that, according to some, the present work depicts Renoir's nephew, Eugène, the only son of Victor-Edmond Renoir, the artist's younger brother.