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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archive funds of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
The present painting, which depicts a young woman seated in a verdant landscape, exemplifies Renoir's central artistic preoccupation during the last decade of his career: the female figure in nature. Throughout this period, he painted dozens of outdoor scenes featuring nude bathers or women in contemporary dress, the figures and their surroundings woven together by palette and touch. In 1918, Renoir explained to the dealer René Gimpel, "I'm trying to fuse the landscape with my figures. The old masters never attempted this" (quoted in J. House, Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 278). Or, as he put it on another occasion, "I'm struggling with my figures, to make them one with the landscape which acts as their background, and I want people to feel that neither my figures nor my trees are flat" (quoted in ibid., p. 278). Discussing this group of pictures, John House writes, "The backgrounds in these late paintings are not mere backdrops. In his portraits they are integral to the whole composition; in his outdoor figures, though thinly painted, they pulse with life. In his backgrounds, the space is rarely legible; trees, grasses and flowers fold themselves around the figures and complement their rhythms. The color schemes of these last paintings are very warm, dominantly pink and orange; these hues are further emphasized by being set off against economically used zones of green and blue, whose coolness emphasizes the overall warmth. Their color is integral to the vision of the world they present, of figures fused with nature in a timeless southern light" (ibid., p. 278).
The majority of these paintings were executed at Cagnes, a settlement just west of Nice where Renoir built a manor house (Les Collettes) in 1908. Situated in the hilly countryside on the outskirts of town, the property featured an ancient olive grove and an old farmhouse, visible in the background of the present painting. Renoir relished the rustic nature of the grounds and struggled to preserve it, instructing his gardener not to remove the grass growing out of the paths. He also built a glass-walled studio with a sunshade that could be raised or lowered, enabling him to take full advantage of the pictorial possibilities of the landscape. John House has analyzed the importance of Les Collettes for Renoir toward the end of his life: "Almost like Monet, who built his water garden as his ideal pictorial subject in his last years, Renoir could construct at Les Collettes a physical world which fulfilled his pictorial vision. But it was quite different in two crucial ways: Monet built his anew, to his own aesthetic specifications, while Renoir's was old, preserved as an idealized vision of past society; and Monet's was an elaborately cultivated garden, conceived as an object of solitary contemplation, whereas Renoir's view of nature necessarily implied a human presence, which the olives and old farm evoked so richly; often, figures beside the house and beneath the trees enliven the scene still further. This harmonious interrelationship between nature and the traces of man became the vision of the 'earthly paradise' which he sought in his art in his last years" (ibid., pp. 287-288).
The model in Femme au corsage rouge is depicted sewing or embroidering, a motif that Renoir explored on several occasions throughout his career. Needlework was a typical feminine pursuit in the artist's day, one that all bourgeois girls were expected to practice and perfect; it was also a means for Renoir to occupy his sitters, so that they would appear natural rather than deliberately posed. Around 1875, for example, Renoir made three paintings that depict Nini de Lopez, his favorite model at the time, knitting or crocheting (Daulte, nos. 153-155). He also used the motif in several society commissions, including an 1882 portrait of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel's eldest daughter, Marie-Thérèse (Daulte, no. 409; coll. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts), and a canvas from 1896 depicting Christine Lerolle, the daughter of a successful Salon painter, Henri Lerolle, and daughter-in-law of the celebrated collector, Henri Rouart (see C. Bailey, Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age, exh. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1997, no. 55; coll. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio).
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
The present painting, which depicts a young woman seated in a verdant landscape, exemplifies Renoir's central artistic preoccupation during the last decade of his career: the female figure in nature. Throughout this period, he painted dozens of outdoor scenes featuring nude bathers or women in contemporary dress, the figures and their surroundings woven together by palette and touch. In 1918, Renoir explained to the dealer René Gimpel, "I'm trying to fuse the landscape with my figures. The old masters never attempted this" (quoted in J. House, Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 278). Or, as he put it on another occasion, "I'm struggling with my figures, to make them one with the landscape which acts as their background, and I want people to feel that neither my figures nor my trees are flat" (quoted in ibid., p. 278). Discussing this group of pictures, John House writes, "The backgrounds in these late paintings are not mere backdrops. In his portraits they are integral to the whole composition; in his outdoor figures, though thinly painted, they pulse with life. In his backgrounds, the space is rarely legible; trees, grasses and flowers fold themselves around the figures and complement their rhythms. The color schemes of these last paintings are very warm, dominantly pink and orange; these hues are further emphasized by being set off against economically used zones of green and blue, whose coolness emphasizes the overall warmth. Their color is integral to the vision of the world they present, of figures fused with nature in a timeless southern light" (ibid., p. 278).
The majority of these paintings were executed at Cagnes, a settlement just west of Nice where Renoir built a manor house (Les Collettes) in 1908. Situated in the hilly countryside on the outskirts of town, the property featured an ancient olive grove and an old farmhouse, visible in the background of the present painting. Renoir relished the rustic nature of the grounds and struggled to preserve it, instructing his gardener not to remove the grass growing out of the paths. He also built a glass-walled studio with a sunshade that could be raised or lowered, enabling him to take full advantage of the pictorial possibilities of the landscape. John House has analyzed the importance of Les Collettes for Renoir toward the end of his life: "Almost like Monet, who built his water garden as his ideal pictorial subject in his last years, Renoir could construct at Les Collettes a physical world which fulfilled his pictorial vision. But it was quite different in two crucial ways: Monet built his anew, to his own aesthetic specifications, while Renoir's was old, preserved as an idealized vision of past society; and Monet's was an elaborately cultivated garden, conceived as an object of solitary contemplation, whereas Renoir's view of nature necessarily implied a human presence, which the olives and old farm evoked so richly; often, figures beside the house and beneath the trees enliven the scene still further. This harmonious interrelationship between nature and the traces of man became the vision of the 'earthly paradise' which he sought in his art in his last years" (ibid., pp. 287-288).
The model in Femme au corsage rouge is depicted sewing or embroidering, a motif that Renoir explored on several occasions throughout his career. Needlework was a typical feminine pursuit in the artist's day, one that all bourgeois girls were expected to practice and perfect; it was also a means for Renoir to occupy his sitters, so that they would appear natural rather than deliberately posed. Around 1875, for example, Renoir made three paintings that depict Nini de Lopez, his favorite model at the time, knitting or crocheting (Daulte, nos. 153-155). He also used the motif in several society commissions, including an 1882 portrait of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel's eldest daughter, Marie-Thérèse (Daulte, no. 409; coll. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts), and a canvas from 1896 depicting Christine Lerolle, the daughter of a successful Salon painter, Henri Lerolle, and daughter-in-law of the celebrated collector, Henri Rouart (see C. Bailey, Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age, exh. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1997, no. 55; coll. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio).