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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute and established from the archive funds of François 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.
In 1907 Renoir purchased Les Collettes, an estate at Cagnes on the Mediterranean coast just west of Nice. Over the next fifteen months, Renoir had a new house built for his family on the estate, leaving the old farmhouse untouched in an attempt to preserve the rural character of the property. The work was completed in the autumn of 1908 and Renoir and his family lived there during the winter months for the rest of his life. From the very beginning, the villa became the focus of Renoir's artistic and social activities, attracting Ambroise Vollard, Claude Monet, Albert André, Maurice Denis, and Paul Durand-Ruel as guests.
The estate was to become one of the principal motifs of Renoir's landscapes and, as in the present work, he often used the farmhouse as the focus of his compositions. Comparisons have been drawn with Monet's affinity in his later career with his gardens at Giverny, although Renoir's conception of Les Collettes was of a less cultivated and more 'human' landscape. This spirit is embraced by the present work, with the central motif of the farmhouse nestling within the trees and shrubbery.
In a 1918 interview Renoir discussed his landscapes of Cagnes with the art critic and dealer René Gimpel: 'The olive tree, what a brute! If you realise how much trouble it has caused me. A tree full of colours. Not great at all. Its little leaves, how they've made me sweat! A gust of wind, and my tree's tonality changes. The colour isn't on the leaves, but in the spaces between them. I know that I can't paint nature, but I enjoy struggling with it. A painter can't be great if he doesn't understand landscape. Landscapes, in the past, have been a form of contempt, particularly in the eighteenth century; but still, that century that I adore did produce some landscapists. I'm at one with the eighteenth century. With all modesty, I consider not only that my art descends from a Watteau, a Fragonard, a Hubert Robert, but also that I am at one with them' (quoted in J. House, exh. cat. Renoir, Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 277).
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.
In 1907 Renoir purchased Les Collettes, an estate at Cagnes on the Mediterranean coast just west of Nice. Over the next fifteen months, Renoir had a new house built for his family on the estate, leaving the old farmhouse untouched in an attempt to preserve the rural character of the property. The work was completed in the autumn of 1908 and Renoir and his family lived there during the winter months for the rest of his life. From the very beginning, the villa became the focus of Renoir's artistic and social activities, attracting Ambroise Vollard, Claude Monet, Albert André, Maurice Denis, and Paul Durand-Ruel as guests.
The estate was to become one of the principal motifs of Renoir's landscapes and, as in the present work, he often used the farmhouse as the focus of his compositions. Comparisons have been drawn with Monet's affinity in his later career with his gardens at Giverny, although Renoir's conception of Les Collettes was of a less cultivated and more 'human' landscape. This spirit is embraced by the present work, with the central motif of the farmhouse nestling within the trees and shrubbery.
In a 1918 interview Renoir discussed his landscapes of Cagnes with the art critic and dealer René Gimpel: 'The olive tree, what a brute! If you realise how much trouble it has caused me. A tree full of colours. Not great at all. Its little leaves, how they've made me sweat! A gust of wind, and my tree's tonality changes. The colour isn't on the leaves, but in the spaces between them. I know that I can't paint nature, but I enjoy struggling with it. A painter can't be great if he doesn't understand landscape. Landscapes, in the past, have been a form of contempt, particularly in the eighteenth century; but still, that century that I adore did produce some landscapists. I'm at one with the eighteenth century. With all modesty, I consider not only that my art descends from a Watteau, a Fragonard, a Hubert Robert, but also that I am at one with them' (quoted in J. House, exh. cat. Renoir, Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 277).