Lot Essay
The subject of the present portrait is Léontine, who came to work for the Renoir family at Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-mer shortly after the birth of the artist's youngest son Claude in 1901. Often compared with her predecessor Gabrielle, Léontine's generously proportioned upper body and fresh, healthy face is typical of Renoir's best late portraits. Her hair, like Gabrielle's, is rich and black, and her apparent innocence is emphasized by her simple hair ribbon and by the stray tendrils that curl around her face. Although the palette of the present painting is soft and subtle and its brushwork fluid and delicate, the solidity of the figure reflects the influence of the sculpture which Renoir began to create around this stage in his career.
After 1900, Renoir increasingly sought to balance his interest in the tenets of Impressionism with his search for a more classicizing form of art. By the time he painted Léontine lisant, his previous interest in naturalism had largely given way to a renewed focus upon the tradition of Rubens and Titian. His models, no longer fleshy young girls, are now robust, mature women like Léontine: "an artless, wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub...a luxuriant, firm, healthy and naive woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and her nostrils dilated," as one critic commented just after the turn of the century. (C. Mauclair, The French Impressionists, London, 1903, p. 46) Describing the quintessential "Renoir women", critic Gustave Geffroy concludes:
This face and this expression must have been so intensely conceived of and favored by Renoir that he found himself unable to disengage
from them; they are recognizable everywhere... Their eyes and lips are all touched with something strange and unconscious, as are all eyes which see existence anew, all smiling mouths eager to kiss and sing... In his portraits, even those which stray furthest from his ideal as observer, he goes straight to those favorite details, he
emphasizes those features, which he no doubt sees as being some of
the decisive proofs of femininity. All the great painters of women show this same instinctive selectiveness, this same creation of a
type of beauty, whether haughty, passionate, melancholy or charming, through which they have expressed their desire and rendered their
thought visible. (G. Geffroy, "La Vie Artistique: Auguste
Renoir," in N. Wadley, ed., Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 190)
François Daulte will include this painting in his forthcoming Renoir catalogue raisonné (vol. III, Figures, 1906-1919).
After 1900, Renoir increasingly sought to balance his interest in the tenets of Impressionism with his search for a more classicizing form of art. By the time he painted Léontine lisant, his previous interest in naturalism had largely given way to a renewed focus upon the tradition of Rubens and Titian. His models, no longer fleshy young girls, are now robust, mature women like Léontine: "an artless, wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub...a luxuriant, firm, healthy and naive woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and her nostrils dilated," as one critic commented just after the turn of the century. (C. Mauclair, The French Impressionists, London, 1903, p. 46) Describing the quintessential "Renoir women", critic Gustave Geffroy concludes:
This face and this expression must have been so intensely conceived of and favored by Renoir that he found himself unable to disengage
from them; they are recognizable everywhere... Their eyes and lips are all touched with something strange and unconscious, as are all eyes which see existence anew, all smiling mouths eager to kiss and sing... In his portraits, even those which stray furthest from his ideal as observer, he goes straight to those favorite details, he
emphasizes those features, which he no doubt sees as being some of
the decisive proofs of femininity. All the great painters of women show this same instinctive selectiveness, this same creation of a
type of beauty, whether haughty, passionate, melancholy or charming, through which they have expressed their desire and rendered their
thought visible. (G. Geffroy, "La Vie Artistique: Auguste
Renoir," in N. Wadley, ed., Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 190)
François Daulte will include this painting in his forthcoming Renoir catalogue raisonné (vol. III, Figures, 1906-1919).