Lot Essay
This painting will be reproduced in the Renoir catalogue raisonn from Franois Daulte being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
In 1869 Renoir spent the entire summer painting en plein air with Monet at La Grenouillire. Monet encouraged him to move towards a lighter and more luminous palette, using pastel grounds; and together they developed a light, assertive painterly techique which was to characterize both their styles in the 1870s. As John Rewald describes:
Nature was no longer, as it was for the Barbizon painters, an object susceptible of interpretation, it became the direct source of pure sensations, reproduced by the technique of small dots and strokes which--instead of insisting on details--retained the general impression in all its richness of colour and life . . . Renoir often selected sun-drenched vistas with pronounced oppositions of light and shadow, as well as the inherent gay mood of light summer days--painted at high noon when the shadows were shortest . . . (J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1963, pp. 281, 284-285).
Paysage au bord de la Seine, pont d'Argenteuil (La rivire) was created in the purest Impressionist plein-air art. Renoir concentrates on rendering the fugitive effects of light without describing any specific details. The entire picture surface is alive with a rich but subtle medley of colors which melt into one another from a distance, creating a shimmering, fleeting effect. Describing his own work Renoir wrote:
Methods and techiques . . . are not taught . . . One learns them by searching. Nothing should be painted in a similar manner. Some things in a canvas gain by being sketched and left to the imagination. It is a matter of feeling (quoted in R. Huyghe, Imprssionism, London, 1981, p. 96).
Paysage au bord de la Seine, pont d'Argenteuil (La rivire) was purchased in 1907 by Olivier Senn, and has remained in the family collection until today. Born in Paris, Senn became a prominent businessman and spent much of his time commuting between Paris and Le Havre. It was on these trips that he befriended many of the artists of the day. His first acquisition was a van Gogh which now hangs in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam, and his passion for collecting continued until his death in 1958.
(fig. 1) Original receipt of sale.
In 1869 Renoir spent the entire summer painting en plein air with Monet at La Grenouillire. Monet encouraged him to move towards a lighter and more luminous palette, using pastel grounds; and together they developed a light, assertive painterly techique which was to characterize both their styles in the 1870s. As John Rewald describes:
Nature was no longer, as it was for the Barbizon painters, an object susceptible of interpretation, it became the direct source of pure sensations, reproduced by the technique of small dots and strokes which--instead of insisting on details--retained the general impression in all its richness of colour and life . . . Renoir often selected sun-drenched vistas with pronounced oppositions of light and shadow, as well as the inherent gay mood of light summer days--painted at high noon when the shadows were shortest . . . (J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1963, pp. 281, 284-285).
Paysage au bord de la Seine, pont d'Argenteuil (La rivire) was created in the purest Impressionist plein-air art. Renoir concentrates on rendering the fugitive effects of light without describing any specific details. The entire picture surface is alive with a rich but subtle medley of colors which melt into one another from a distance, creating a shimmering, fleeting effect. Describing his own work Renoir wrote:
Methods and techiques . . . are not taught . . . One learns them by searching. Nothing should be painted in a similar manner. Some things in a canvas gain by being sketched and left to the imagination. It is a matter of feeling (quoted in R. Huyghe, Imprssionism, London, 1981, p. 96).
Paysage au bord de la Seine, pont d'Argenteuil (La rivire) was purchased in 1907 by Olivier Senn, and has remained in the family collection until today. Born in Paris, Senn became a prominent businessman and spent much of his time commuting between Paris and Le Havre. It was on these trips that he befriended many of the artists of the day. His first acquisition was a van Gogh which now hangs in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam, and his passion for collecting continued until his death in 1958.
(fig. 1) Original receipt of sale.