.jpg?maxwidth=3840)
拍品 55
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Melon et tomates
成交价
GBP 344,000
更多信息
专家说明
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 picture is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. Among the most 'academic' of the Impressionists - a position he shared with Cézanne, another devotee of the still-life subject - Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life 'in order to teach yourself to paint quickly' (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces.
As with Cézanne, the masters of French eigteenth-century painting exerted a strong pull on Renoir. While his figure pictures looked towards Watteau and Boucher, his still-lifes found their inspiration in Chardin's unique vision. Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting: 'Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but 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).
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this picture is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
Still-life occupies a prominent position in Renoir's work from the early 1880s onward. Among the most 'academic' of the Impressionists - a position he shared with Cézanne, another devotee of the still-life subject - Renoir is frequently remembered as a painter of the female figure. Although he recommended to Manet's niece Julie to paint still-life 'in order to teach yourself to paint quickly' (quoted in J. Manet, Journal, 1893-1899, Paris, no date, p. 190), the numerous works, often elaborate and ambitious, which Renoir executed in this genre over the course of his career attest to his sustained interest in still-life as an end in itself. Indeed, it was in his still-life compositions that Renoir pursued some of his most searching investigations of the effects of light and color on objects and surfaces.
As with Cézanne, the masters of French eigteenth-century painting exerted a strong pull on Renoir. While his figure pictures looked towards Watteau and Boucher, his still-lifes found their inspiration in Chardin's unique vision. Discussing Renoir's pictorial dialogue with Chardin, Charles Sterling has rendered a statement of Renoir's achievement in still-life which could well describe the present painting: 'Nurtured on the traditions of eighteenth-century French painting, Renoir made no attempt to energize his compositions, as Monet did, but 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).