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拍品專文
Pierre-Auguste Renoir began to work in pastel as early as 1874, and his interest in the medium grew as his efforts in portraiture began to bring him some measure of financial success. Renoir greatly admired the pastels of Jean-Antoine Watteau, and other 18th century artists, and pastel portraits were becoming fashionable again. However, Renoir only rarely employed pastel for formal portrait commissions, preferring instead to use the medium for more casual works in which the sitters were friends or family. ‘It was about 1890 that Renoir’s first pastel portraits appeared. If he frequently used that medium to depict those near and dear to him it was because pastel, which combines colour with line, gave him the possibility of working rapidly in all their vividness the rapid flash of intelligence and the fleeting shadow of emotion’ (F. Daulte, Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Watercolours, Pastels and Drawings in Colour, London, 1959, p. 10).
The subject of Suzanne et Jean is in fact composed of three parts: the classical and timeless composition of a mother, or maternal figure, and child, as well as a portrait of both Suzanne Valadon, one of the artist’s most famous models and mistresses, who was by this time an artist in her own right, and the infant Jean Renoir, the artist’s second son from his wife, Aline Charigot. Valadon had been the model for some of Renoir’s most famous paintings, including Danse à la ville, 1883 (Wildenstein no. 1000; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and she had also been Renoir’s mistress, given birth to her illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, and this image of her holding Renoir’s son is striking, in light of the rumours there had been that Renoir was the father, although in reality this seems highly unlikely. In fact, Renoir went on to marry Aline Charigot, who had been the model for Danse à la campagne, 1883 (Wildenstein no. 999; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), the pendant to the Danse à la ville.
With marriage and the three sons he had with Aline, Renoir found the most important models in his later artistic career; according to Jean Renoir, here depicted as an infant, the birth of his sons ‘Was a big revolution in Renoir’s life. The theories of Nouvelle Athènes had been overtaken by a dimple to the joint of a newborns thigh. By drawing his children, Renior was rebuilding his inner world’ (Jean Renoir, quoted in M. Peltier, Renoir, sa femme et ses enfants d’abord, Paris, 2009, p. 70). Jean Renoir was born in September 1894, when the family were living in the Château des Brouillards in Montmartre, which is most likely where this pastel was executed. He later became a celebrated film-maker whose memoirs, Renoir, My Father (Boston, 1962) are, alongside Renoir’s own paintings and drawings such as this, the best and most affectionate record of the family’s domestic intimacy and happiness.
The subject of Suzanne et Jean is in fact composed of three parts: the classical and timeless composition of a mother, or maternal figure, and child, as well as a portrait of both Suzanne Valadon, one of the artist’s most famous models and mistresses, who was by this time an artist in her own right, and the infant Jean Renoir, the artist’s second son from his wife, Aline Charigot. Valadon had been the model for some of Renoir’s most famous paintings, including Danse à la ville, 1883 (Wildenstein no. 1000; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and she had also been Renoir’s mistress, given birth to her illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, and this image of her holding Renoir’s son is striking, in light of the rumours there had been that Renoir was the father, although in reality this seems highly unlikely. In fact, Renoir went on to marry Aline Charigot, who had been the model for Danse à la campagne, 1883 (Wildenstein no. 999; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), the pendant to the Danse à la ville.
With marriage and the three sons he had with Aline, Renoir found the most important models in his later artistic career; according to Jean Renoir, here depicted as an infant, the birth of his sons ‘Was a big revolution in Renoir’s life. The theories of Nouvelle Athènes had been overtaken by a dimple to the joint of a newborns thigh. By drawing his children, Renior was rebuilding his inner world’ (Jean Renoir, quoted in M. Peltier, Renoir, sa femme et ses enfants d’abord, Paris, 2009, p. 70). Jean Renoir was born in September 1894, when the family were living in the Château des Brouillards in Montmartre, which is most likely where this pastel was executed. He later became a celebrated film-maker whose memoirs, Renoir, My Father (Boston, 1962) are, alongside Renoir’s own paintings and drawings such as this, the best and most affectionate record of the family’s domestic intimacy and happiness.