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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.
Throughout his career, one of Renoir's favorite themes was the visual pageantry of the everyday world, exemplified by the portrayal of young girls clad in elaborately decorated hats. In addition to formal society portraits, he frequently painted anonymous models in this way, focusing on their youthful appeal and stylish adornment. As John House has written, "His most often repeated subject was the fashionable modern costume piece--figures of girls, often wearing fancy hats, some head and shoulders, some half length, some full length, with single figures or pairs. It was with pictures such as these, it seems, that the found a real market in the 1890s, particularly with Durand-Ruel" (Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 251).
Renoir's interest in women's fashion, especially millinery, is well-documented. Suzanne Valadon, who posed for the painter intermittently between 1883 and 1887, recalled in her memoirs that he had a particular penchant for women's hats and had them made to order for his sitters. In a letter to an unidentified model dated 1880, Renoir wrote, "Come to Chatou tomorrow with a pretty summer hat. Do you still have that big hat that you look so nice in? If so, I'd like that, the gray one, the one you wore in Argenteuil" (quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 204). In 1878, he painted his favorite model at the time, Marguerite Legrand, seated in a milliner's shop (Daulte no. 274; coll. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts), anticipating Degas's celebrated series on the subject. The following year, he proposed to Madame Charpentier, one of his most important early patrons, that her husband feature the fashions of the week on the last page of the journal that he published, La Vie Moderne: "We could make an arrangement with milliners and seamstresses--one week for hats, the next for dresses, etc. I would visit them so that I could do the necessary drawings from different angles on site" (quoted in ibid., p. 181). In the late 1890s, the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel tried to persuade Renoir to stop painting girls in elaborate hats, since these had gone out of fashion, but the painter persisted, citing his weakness for "beautiful fabrics, shimmering silks, sparkling diamonds--though the thought of adorning myself with them is horrifying! So I am grateful to others when they do so-- provided I am permitted to paint them" (ibid., p. 204).
In the present painting, the focal point is a young, russet-haired girl wearing a broad-brimmed, white hat ornamented with a bright, vermillion ribbon. To the left of the canvas is a second figure clad in a pink chemise, who adjusts a small, sketchily rendered hat of her own. The russet-haired model has turned so that her face is almost entirely concealed from the viewer, lending the white hat an unexpected dominance over the composition. Degas used the same strategy in several of his milliner scenes from 1882-1886 (e.g. Lemoisne, no. 729; coll. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid). The figures are depicted bust-length against a broadly brushed background of brown, gray, and gold, vaguely suggestive of an interior space. The poses of the two girls appear natural and momentary, and the paint is applied in the rapid, creamy strokes of Renoir's mature period. John House provides an account of the artist's late style which aptly describes the present painting: "His color schemes began to grow warmer and his touch more mobile. Soft varied nuances were threaded through his figures, and his backgrounds began to be treated, at times, with a more emphatic touch, which draws them into an active relationship with the main subject. This process of surface enrichment ushered in the ebullience of his last works" (op. cit., p. 268).
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
Throughout his career, one of Renoir's favorite themes was the visual pageantry of the everyday world, exemplified by the portrayal of young girls clad in elaborately decorated hats. In addition to formal society portraits, he frequently painted anonymous models in this way, focusing on their youthful appeal and stylish adornment. As John House has written, "His most often repeated subject was the fashionable modern costume piece--figures of girls, often wearing fancy hats, some head and shoulders, some half length, some full length, with single figures or pairs. It was with pictures such as these, it seems, that the found a real market in the 1890s, particularly with Durand-Ruel" (Renoir, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 251).
Renoir's interest in women's fashion, especially millinery, is well-documented. Suzanne Valadon, who posed for the painter intermittently between 1883 and 1887, recalled in her memoirs that he had a particular penchant for women's hats and had them made to order for his sitters. In a letter to an unidentified model dated 1880, Renoir wrote, "Come to Chatou tomorrow with a pretty summer hat. Do you still have that big hat that you look so nice in? If so, I'd like that, the gray one, the one you wore in Argenteuil" (quoted in G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1996, p. 204). In 1878, he painted his favorite model at the time, Marguerite Legrand, seated in a milliner's shop (Daulte no. 274; coll. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts), anticipating Degas's celebrated series on the subject. The following year, he proposed to Madame Charpentier, one of his most important early patrons, that her husband feature the fashions of the week on the last page of the journal that he published, La Vie Moderne: "We could make an arrangement with milliners and seamstresses--one week for hats, the next for dresses, etc. I would visit them so that I could do the necessary drawings from different angles on site" (quoted in ibid., p. 181). In the late 1890s, the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel tried to persuade Renoir to stop painting girls in elaborate hats, since these had gone out of fashion, but the painter persisted, citing his weakness for "beautiful fabrics, shimmering silks, sparkling diamonds--though the thought of adorning myself with them is horrifying! So I am grateful to others when they do so-- provided I am permitted to paint them" (ibid., p. 204).
In the present painting, the focal point is a young, russet-haired girl wearing a broad-brimmed, white hat ornamented with a bright, vermillion ribbon. To the left of the canvas is a second figure clad in a pink chemise, who adjusts a small, sketchily rendered hat of her own. The russet-haired model has turned so that her face is almost entirely concealed from the viewer, lending the white hat an unexpected dominance over the composition. Degas used the same strategy in several of his milliner scenes from 1882-1886 (e.g. Lemoisne, no. 729; coll. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid). The figures are depicted bust-length against a broadly brushed background of brown, gray, and gold, vaguely suggestive of an interior space. The poses of the two girls appear natural and momentary, and the paint is applied in the rapid, creamy strokes of Renoir's mature period. John House provides an account of the artist's late style which aptly describes the present painting: "His color schemes began to grow warmer and his touch more mobile. Soft varied nuances were threaded through his figures, and his backgrounds began to be treated, at times, with a more emphatic touch, which draws them into an active relationship with the main subject. This process of surface enrichment ushered in the ebullience of his last works" (op. cit., p. 268).