Lot Essay
The present work is a study for Renoir's Femme à la Guitare of 1897 sold at Christie's, London, on 30th November 1992, lot 21.
In the late 1890s Renoir accomplished a series of guitar studies in which the players were dressed in Spanish costumes. Renoir was inspired by a glamorous dancer at the Folies-Bergères, "la Belle Otero - the incarnation of Spanish seduction" (Renoir, Ses amis, ses modèles, Paris, 1949, p. 70).
At the time an important change was starting to take place in Renoir's treatment of costumed figures. At the beginning of the 1890s he was painting girls dressed in fashionable modern dresses; later he favoured more conservative forms. The Spanish costumed figures recall the orientalist costumes of his early days. "His rejection of contemporaneity in the later 1890s was an aspect of a general shift towards a more classicizing form of art ... He did not return to modern French dress in his later costume pieces, preferring to retain this more timeless mood, with its overtones of exoticism." (Anne Distel, Renoir, London, 1985, p. 265.)
In the late 1890s Renoir accomplished a series of guitar studies in which the players were dressed in Spanish costumes. Renoir was inspired by a glamorous dancer at the Folies-Bergères, "la Belle Otero - the incarnation of Spanish seduction" (Renoir, Ses amis, ses modèles, Paris, 1949, p. 70).
At the time an important change was starting to take place in Renoir's treatment of costumed figures. At the beginning of the 1890s he was painting girls dressed in fashionable modern dresses; later he favoured more conservative forms. The Spanish costumed figures recall the orientalist costumes of his early days. "His rejection of contemporaneity in the later 1890s was an aspect of a general shift towards a more classicizing form of art ... He did not return to modern French dress in his later costume pieces, preferring to retain this more timeless mood, with its overtones of exoticism." (Anne Distel, Renoir, London, 1985, p. 265.)