PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)
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This lot has been imported from outside of the UK … Read more PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)

Pêches et prunes

Details
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)
Pêches et prunes
stamped 'Renoir' (Lugt 2137b; lower right)
oil on canvas
8 ¼ x 14 ¼ in. (21 x 36.3 cm.)
Painted in 1919
Provenance
The artist's estate.
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by whom acquired from the above.
Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler, Switzerland.
Lisa Jäggli-Hahnloser, Winterthur, by descent from the above, by 1952.
Barr & Ochsner, Zurich.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, by 2001.
Literature
Bernheim-Jeune, ed., L'Atelier de Renoir, vol. I, Paris, 1931, no. 709 (illustrated, pl. 225; titled 'Esquisse de nature morte').
G.-P. & M. Dauberville, Renoir: Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, vol. V, 1911-1919, Paris, 2014, no. 3725, p. 78 (illustrated; titled 'Esquisse de nature morte').
Exhibited
Winterthur, Kunstmuseum (on loan).
Special notice
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
Further details
This work will be included in the forthcoming Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.

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Lot Essay

Painted in the final year of the artist’s life, Prunes et pêches displays the artist’s interest in the effects of light and colour on objects and surfaces. At the beginning of his career Renoir, unlike his peers, had shown little interest in still-life compositions. However, this genre soon began to occupy an increasingly important position in his work, underlining the academic approach that influenced his art. His main influence was then Jean Siméon Chardin, France's great genre painter. ‘Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting,’ Charles Sterling commented discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, ‘Renoir...carried on the serene simplicity of Chardin. Pale shadows, light as a breath of air, faintly ripple across the perishable jewel of a ripe fruit. Renoir reconciles extreme discretion with extreme richness, and his full-bodied density is made up, it would seem, of coloured air. This is a lyrical idiom hitherto unknown in still life, even in those of Chardin. Between these objects and us there floats a luminous haze through which we distinguish them, tenderly united in a subdued shimmer of light (C. Sterling, Still Life in Painting from Antiquity to the Present Time, Paris, 1959, p. 100).
Although Chardin’s lesson was always detectable in Renoir’s still-lifes, his approach to the subject in the later years would undeniably turn to the output of his contemporaries, particularly Cézanne’s. The inventiveness of the composition, created from the very simplest of means, is indebted to the numerous still-lifes Cézanne painted in Melun. Rendered in quick, almost brisk brushstrokes of vivid colours – shades of green, red and white – the composition also demonstrates Renoir’s interest in the most recent artistic developments, such as Fauvism and Expressionism. Its nonchalant nature and vivid hues gift this jewel-like painting with the aura of modernity that only a master as Renoir could achieve.

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