拍品專文
A close friendship developed between Renoir and Berthe Morisot, in 1885, when both artists were forty-four years old, and continued until Morisot's death a decade later. Morisot invited Renoir to her weekly dinner parties, which were also attended by Eugène and Julie Manet (Morisot's husband and daughter) and the poet Stéphane Mallarmé.
While their subjects and ultimately their styles differ, the similarity of palette and brushwork in each artist's work of the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s is notable. From 1893 to 1895 Renoir was living in Paris and working at his studio in the Château de Brouillards on top of the Butte Montmartre. During this period he frequently visited Morisot at her summer home in Mézuy, and they often painted side-by-side. Here they treated similiar themes that of young girls in a landscape.(B.E. White, Impressionists Side by Side, New York, 1996, p. 213)
As in many of Renoir's works from this period, here two young girls converse in the foreground surrounded by a lush, green foliage which fills the canvas. Renoir said of these paintings, "As for me, I just struggle with my figures until they are a harmonious unity with their landscape background, and I want people to feel that neither the setting nor the figure are dull and lifeless" (quoted in K. Wheldon, Renoir and his Art, London, 1975, pp. 108-109). As Barbara E. White has noted:
Tangible forms are surrounded by a warm atmosphere created by expressive brushstrokes of vibrant color and sparkling light. Classical feelings of weightiness and universality are blended with Impressionist feelings of movement and joyfulness. (B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 217)
While their subjects and ultimately their styles differ, the similarity of palette and brushwork in each artist's work of the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s is notable. From 1893 to 1895 Renoir was living in Paris and working at his studio in the Château de Brouillards on top of the Butte Montmartre. During this period he frequently visited Morisot at her summer home in Mézuy, and they often painted side-by-side. Here they treated similiar themes that of young girls in a landscape.(B.E. White, Impressionists Side by Side, New York, 1996, p. 213)
As in many of Renoir's works from this period, here two young girls converse in the foreground surrounded by a lush, green foliage which fills the canvas. Renoir said of these paintings, "As for me, I just struggle with my figures until they are a harmonious unity with their landscape background, and I want people to feel that neither the setting nor the figure are dull and lifeless" (quoted in K. Wheldon, Renoir and his Art, London, 1975, pp. 108-109). As Barbara E. White has noted:
Tangible forms are surrounded by a warm atmosphere created by expressive brushstrokes of vibrant color and sparkling light. Classical feelings of weightiness and universality are blended with Impressionist feelings of movement and joyfulness. (B.E. White, Renoir, His Life, Art and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 217)