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拍品专文
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archive of Francois Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune Archives as an authentic work.
Renoir occasionally worked in the circular, or oval, format in his portraits, a practice that reflected his earliest experience as a painter, when he made his living by painstakingly rendering historical portraits on porcelain plates. His son Jean wrote that the young artist-to-be painted Marie-Antoinette "so many times that it he could have done it with his eyes closed" (quoted in Renoir, My Father, New York, 1958, p. 54). There was also a tradition of tondo portraiture in French painting, ranging from the early Renaissance into the late 19th century. It is an odd coincidence that around the time that Renoir painted this portrait, Pablo Picasso and George Braque also employed a circular or oval format for some of their cubist compositions. This shape was well-suited to portraiture. By closing in the space surrounding the sitter's head, and echoing its rounded shape, the oval creates an especially intimate feeling, which has here enhanced the loveliness and femininity of Renoir's young model.
The subject of this portrait is Madeleine Bruno, a local girl who began to pose for Renoir around 1912. Gabrielle Renard, the Renoir family's nanny, had hitherto been the artist's most frequent model. Marie Dupuis, who was known to the family as "La Boulangére" and had served as their housekeeper since 1899, also posed, but neither she nor Gabrielle, then in her mid-30s, possessed the ideally youthful looks that Renoir required. In early 1915 Renoir engaged the sixteen-year-old Andrée ("Dédé") Heuchling to serve as his chief model. In dual figure compositions he liked to contrast the redheaded Dédé with the dark-haired, Mediterranean Madeleine. As seen here, Renoir often depicted Madeleine wearing a flower in her hair, in the seductive Spanish style of Bizet's Carmen.
The first owner of this painting was Maurice Gangnat. The collector Paul Gallimard brought Gangnat, his brother-in-law, a retired industrialist recently returned from Naples, to Renoir's Cagnes studio in 1904. Gangnat and Renoir became friendly, and soon afterwards Gangnat paid the artist 26,000 francs for twelve paintings. During the next fifteen years, until Renoir's death, he went on to amass many more, becoming the most important collector of the artist's new paintings. He was a frequent visitor to Renoir's home at Les Collettes. Jean Renoir recalled, "That great bourgeois gentleman was carrying on the tradition of old Choquet [the renowned patron of the Impressionists]. His feeling for painting was astounding. Whenever he entered the studio, his gaze always fell immediately on the canvas Renoir considered the best. 'He has an eye for it!' my father declared. Renoir also said that collectors who really knew anything about it are rarer than good painters" (in ibid., p. 424).
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune Archives as an authentic work.
Renoir occasionally worked in the circular, or oval, format in his portraits, a practice that reflected his earliest experience as a painter, when he made his living by painstakingly rendering historical portraits on porcelain plates. His son Jean wrote that the young artist-to-be painted Marie-Antoinette "so many times that it he could have done it with his eyes closed" (quoted in Renoir, My Father, New York, 1958, p. 54). There was also a tradition of tondo portraiture in French painting, ranging from the early Renaissance into the late 19th century. It is an odd coincidence that around the time that Renoir painted this portrait, Pablo Picasso and George Braque also employed a circular or oval format for some of their cubist compositions. This shape was well-suited to portraiture. By closing in the space surrounding the sitter's head, and echoing its rounded shape, the oval creates an especially intimate feeling, which has here enhanced the loveliness and femininity of Renoir's young model.
The subject of this portrait is Madeleine Bruno, a local girl who began to pose for Renoir around 1912. Gabrielle Renard, the Renoir family's nanny, had hitherto been the artist's most frequent model. Marie Dupuis, who was known to the family as "La Boulangére" and had served as their housekeeper since 1899, also posed, but neither she nor Gabrielle, then in her mid-30s, possessed the ideally youthful looks that Renoir required. In early 1915 Renoir engaged the sixteen-year-old Andrée ("Dédé") Heuchling to serve as his chief model. In dual figure compositions he liked to contrast the redheaded Dédé with the dark-haired, Mediterranean Madeleine. As seen here, Renoir often depicted Madeleine wearing a flower in her hair, in the seductive Spanish style of Bizet's Carmen.
The first owner of this painting was Maurice Gangnat. The collector Paul Gallimard brought Gangnat, his brother-in-law, a retired industrialist recently returned from Naples, to Renoir's Cagnes studio in 1904. Gangnat and Renoir became friendly, and soon afterwards Gangnat paid the artist 26,000 francs for twelve paintings. During the next fifteen years, until Renoir's death, he went on to amass many more, becoming the most important collector of the artist's new paintings. He was a frequent visitor to Renoir's home at Les Collettes. Jean Renoir recalled, "That great bourgeois gentleman was carrying on the tradition of old Choquet [the renowned patron of the Impressionists]. His feeling for painting was astounding. Whenever he entered the studio, his gaze always fell immediately on the canvas Renoir considered the best. 'He has an eye for it!' my father declared. Renoir also said that collectors who really knew anything about it are rarer than good painters" (in ibid., p. 424).