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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue raisonné from François Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
John House has written of this period, during which the present work was painted,
Around 1900 the patterns of Renoir's life changed again: from then until the end of his life he and his family spent long periods each winter and spring on the Mediterranean coast and much of the summer at Essoyes, where they now owned a house, with only limited spells in Paris. From 1903 onwards, in the south they went always to Cagnes, just west of Nice, where in 1907 they bought land and began to build a house. The immediate reason for these changes was Renoir's health...but they reflected a more general change in his art, towards the Classicism of the Mediterranean and, more particularly, towards ideas then associated with the revival of Provençal culture...Renoir first gained real fame during those years. He became Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1900, but it was the retrospective of his work included in the 1904 Salon d'Automne which sealed his reputation. (J. House, Renoir, New York, 1985, pp. 268-269)
In discussing a related work, House provides an appropriate commentary for the present painting, "This type of picture is an unusual combination of classicism and Impressionism. The careful compositional framing and the combination of all the elements into a harmonious ensemble clearly belongs to the heritage of Claude, while the small scale, the broken touch and the summary description of objects closely ally the picture with the tradition of the Impressionist sketch. This unified yet animated vision of landscape compliments the vision of woman within nature which emerged in the major outdoor figure paintings of his last years." (ibid, pp. 268-269)
John House has written of this period, during which the present work was painted,
Around 1900 the patterns of Renoir's life changed again: from then until the end of his life he and his family spent long periods each winter and spring on the Mediterranean coast and much of the summer at Essoyes, where they now owned a house, with only limited spells in Paris. From 1903 onwards, in the south they went always to Cagnes, just west of Nice, where in 1907 they bought land and began to build a house. The immediate reason for these changes was Renoir's health...but they reflected a more general change in his art, towards the Classicism of the Mediterranean and, more particularly, towards ideas then associated with the revival of Provençal culture...Renoir first gained real fame during those years. He became Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1900, but it was the retrospective of his work included in the 1904 Salon d'Automne which sealed his reputation. (J. House, Renoir, New York, 1985, pp. 268-269)
In discussing a related work, House provides an appropriate commentary for the present painting, "This type of picture is an unusual combination of classicism and Impressionism. The careful compositional framing and the combination of all the elements into a harmonious ensemble clearly belongs to the heritage of Claude, while the small scale, the broken touch and the summary description of objects closely ally the picture with the tradition of the Impressionist sketch. This unified yet animated vision of landscape compliments the vision of woman within nature which emerged in the major outdoor figure paintings of his last years." (ibid, pp. 268-269)