Renoir by Misha Beletsky

Anne Distel Conservateur général honoraire du patrimoine après une carrière dans les musées nationaux, successivement à l’ancien musée du Jeu de Paume, au musée d’Orsay et à la Direction des musées de France comme chef du département des collections. Spécialiste de peinture impressionniste, elle a participé à l’organisation et aux catalogues de nombreuses expositions internationales notamment, Centenaire de l’Impressionnisme (1974), Renoir (1985), Seurat (1991), De Cézanne à Matisse, Chefs-d’œuvre de la fondation Barnes (1993-1994), Gustave Caillebotte (1994), Un Ami de Cézanne et Van Gogh : le docteur Gachet (1999), Paul Signac (2001), De Cézanne à Picasso, chefs-d’œuvre de la galerie Vollard (2006-2007). Ses recherches ont aussi porté sur le monde des collectionneurs et des marchands des impressionnistes avec de nombreux articles et un ouvrage, Les collectionneurs des impressionnistes (1989).

Documents de la jaquette et du coffret : 1er plat : Femme au bord de la mer, 1883 Huile sur toile, 92 x 73 cm New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo Dist. RMN/Image of the MMA 4e plat : Bal du Moulin de la Galette Daté 1876 Huile sur toile 131 x 175 cm Troisième exposition impressionniste, 1877 Paris, musée d’Orsay Photo Hervé Lewandowski/RMN

Renoir

L’AUTEUR : ANNE DISTEL

Anne Distel Quatre mille ! c’est le nombre d’œuvres attribuées à Renoir, dispersées dans tous les grands musées du monde. Cet artiste, dont le cercle d’amis s’étendait de Monet à Manet ou de Sisley à Caillebotte, ne voulait s’exprimer qu’à travers son art. Est-ce la raison pour laquelle aucune monographie d’importance ne lui a été consacrée ces vingt dernières décennies ? Voilà le défi enfin relevé. En analysant en détail ses soixante ans de travail ininterrompu, Anne Distel a dégagé l’immense intérêt de son œuvre : l’appel irrésistible des couleurs, l’approche sensuelle et naïve de sa peinture qui permet la compréhension immédiate du spectateur, des types simples, modèles d’atelier ou bourgeois, facilement accessibles. Ne nions pourtant pas les écarts de qualité entre des œuvres de la même époque, qui ont nui à la réputation du peintre, faisant parfois oublier ses chefs-d’œuvre. Grâce à l’auteur renaît toute une époque : nous y voyons Charles Gounod encourager le peintre, Alfred Sisley devenir un intime, Frédéric Bazille – né comme lui en 1841 – devenir proche, Daubigny et Corot le soutenir ; Renoir deviendra même l’ami proche, puis l’exécuteur testamentaire, de Gustave Caillebotte. Quant aux écrivains, ils ne sont pas en reste : Zola et Stéphane Mallarmé, Octave Mirbeau deviennent des défenseurs ardents. Nous participons à l’aventure, allant de cercles d’amis en Salons parisiens ou Expositions universelles, d’ateliers d’artiste en escapades bretonnes, italiennes, algériennes ou cagnoises. Le rôle des grands marchands voire de mécènes, tels Paul Durand-Ruel, Charles Ephrussi, Paul Bérard, Albert Cahen d’Anvers, le docteur Barnes, Henri Rouart… tient une grande place dans ce récit.

Renoir

Admirons enfin son œuvre comme l’a fait le grand historien d’art Elie Faure : « Aimez-le pour ces bras épais, ces bouches bestiales qu’il aime, puisqu’il vous fait aimer, grâce à ce caraco malpropre où il a vu s’allumer des rubis, trembler des perles, flotter des opales, la poitrine dure et le cou robuste de cette jeune servante, près de laquelle vous alliez passer sans la voir. Souvenez-vous qu’il a fallu surprendre bien des regards sous des voilettes, de charmantes moues sur des lèvres, bien des abandons enivrés dans les bras du danseur ou sur la poitrine de l’amant, bien des rires et des sauts de petite fille éblouie, pour ne plus voir que ces vastes formes sommaires qui semblent concentrer, dans leurs épaisseurs battantes, le sang et le feu du soleil… Et demandez-vous quelle somme d’amour, de souffrance, de sagesse, il faut entasser dans son

Renoir Anne Distel

Abbeville Press Publishers N ew York â&#x20AC;&#x192; Lo n d on

1 (page 2) Self-Portrait 1875 Detail of plate 106

2 (opposite) Frédéric Bazille at His Easel Dated 1867 Detail of plate 47

Slipcase and jacket, front and back: Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881; detail of plate 175 Translators from the French: John Goodman (principal) and Eileen Hennessy, Charles Penwarden, and Molly Stevens For the English-language edition Editors: Susan Costello and David Fabricant Copy editor: Miranda Ottewell Production manager: Louise Kurtz jacket design and typography: Misha Beletsky First published in the United States of America in 2010 by Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013. First published in France in 2009 by Édition, Éditions Citadelles & Mazenod, 8, rue Gaston de Saint-Paul, 75116, Paris, France. Text copyright © Éditio-Éditions Citadelles & Mazenod, 2009. English translation copyright © 2010 Abbeville Press. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013. Set in Adobe Garamond Premier Pro. Printed in Singapore. First edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Distel, Anne. Renoir / Anne Distel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7892-1057-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Renoir, Auguste, 1841-1919. 2. Painters—France—Biography. I. Renoir, Auguste, 1841-1919. II. Title. ND553.R45D565 2010 759.4—dc22 2009037546 For bulk and premium sales and for text adoption procedures, write to Customer Service Manager, Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013, or call 1-800-ARTBOOK. Visit Abbeville Press online at www.abbeville.com.

Contents 1. 2.

Preface

1860–64: Apprenticeship ·

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

3 (opposite)

A Parisian Childhood In Search of a Profession Renoir at the Ecole Impériale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts (1862–64) The Gleyre Atelier Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, and Manet 1864: Renoir’s First Salon.

1865–73: Accepted or Refused? Renoir at the Paris Salon ·

Reading the Role c. 1874–76 Detail of plate 284

The Salon of 1865 In Marlotte: The Inn of Mother Antony The Salon of 1866: Renoir “Rejected” Renoir’s First Patron, Charles Le Coeur The Path to Success: Lise at the Salon of 1868 An Atelier in the Batignolles Quarter With Monet at La Grenouillère Successes and Setbacks: The Salons of 1870, 1872, and 1873 With Monet in Argenteuil.

1874–77: In the Midst of the Impressionist Adventure

103

A Challenge to the Official Salon: The First Impressionist Exhibition The Impressionist Sale of 1875 1876: The Second Impressionist Exhibition 1877: The Third Impressionist Exhibition Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette A Letter on Architecture by an Impressionist.

1878–83: On the Margins of the Impressionist Group;

Return to the Salon and Travel

153

“Les Peintres Impressionistes” by Théodore Duret Margot or Anna? Madame Charpentier and Her Children at the Salon of 1879 The Summer at Wargemont Commissioned Portraits, 1880–83 Luncheon of the Boating Party Travel in Algeria and Italy, 1881-82 Dance in the Country, Dance in the City.

1884–90: Reaction and Evolution ·

227

· ·

In Memory of Manet Renoir the “Irrégularisté” Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont Nursing The Impressionists of Paris A Getaway in Brittany Bathers: An Attempt at Decorative Painting Portraits, 1887–88 “Like Fragonard But Not As Good”.

1891–1900: The Years of Achievement ·

267

· ·

A Settled Family Life Mediterranean Villages and Other Places Nudes, 1891–1900 A Purchase by the French Government and a Retrospective, 1892 The Caillebotte Bequest Portraits, 1891–1900 New Supporters Ambroise Vollard Bernheim-Jeune Renoir: A Master? Exhibitions in France: “The Final Triumph”.

· ·

1901–7: International Recognition ·

319

Renoir in the Museums Paris–New York, Paris–Berlin A Chapter in Art History Exhibitions, 1901–7, and the Salon d’Automne of 1904 The Advantages and Drawbacks of Celebrity A String of Motifs, 1901–7.

1908–19: The Patriarch of Les Collettes ·

· ·

341

Renoir, Proprietor, and Paterfamilias Art Theories Holidays in Germany Portraits “The Aged Renoir, The Greatest Painter of Our Age, and One of the Greatest Painters of All Time” The Pharaonic Undertaking of Dr. Barnes Never a Single Day without Painting Renoir as Sculptor War Matisse and Picasso A Visit to the Louvre.

Epilogue

379

Chronology 380 N ot e s 3 84 B i b l i o gr a p h y 39 3 I n d e x o f Wo r k s by r e n oi r r epr oduced 394 I n d e x o f N a m e s 39 6 7

Preface At the end of his career, Renoir confided to one of his closest friends, the painter Albert André, “Today, when I look back at my life, I compare it to a cork thrown into a river. It dashes off, then it gets caught in an eddy, circles back, is sucked under, bobbles up again, gets caught on a reed, tries desperately to break free, and ends up getting lost, who knows where.”1 To those curious about the vicissitudes of the cork, the artist made no secret of his reticence. “I am horrified at the thought of the public knowing how I like my cutlet and whether my parents were poor but honest. Painters are boring when they tell their pathetic life stories, and nobody gives a damn anyway,” he fiercely declared to someone who had made unwelcome inquiries, unnerved by the prospect of scraps from his private life being delivered up to the public.2 Such an attitude is scarcely favorable to the task of the biographer. Fortunately, Renoir left more than a thousand spontaneous and revealing letters, in addition to many brief notes of the kind indispensable to daily communication in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This personal and professional correspondence, together with a few published interviews and authorized profiles, reveals much, not only about the man but also about the artist and his work. These primary sources have been widely exploited in the literature, but new documents are constantly being discovered that add to the record and nuance the story.3 In any case, it is clear that Renoir wanted to be known through his art alone, and it would seem that he succeeded: all great museums own at least some of his works, and any temporary exhibition graced with his name will draw crowds. The ubiquitous reproduction of some of his compositions, so that they are familiar throughout the world, has made him popular with a public that has

no knowledge of his life, or of the art world from which he emerged. No less than four thousand works were attributed to Renoir during his lifetime.4 Such abundance might well discourage detailed study, and almost a century after the artist’s death, a complete catalogue raisonné of his work has yet to appear (although several publications, including some currently under way, have laid claim to this status).5 This makes Renoir the sole member of the Impressionist group to lack such a published commemorative monument.

8 (opposite) Study for Girls at the Piano 1892 Detail of plate 257

9 (above) Tama 1876 Oil on canvas, 15 × 18 in. (38 × 46 cm) The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Preface

1860â&#x20AC;&#x201C;64: Apprenticeship

85 (pages 102–3)

A C h a l l e n g e to t h e O f f icia l S a l o n : T h e Fi r s t I m p r e ssi o n is t Exhibition

Path Rising through Tall Grass, c. 1875 Detail of plate 103

n the preceding decade, artists, wanting to be done with the official jury, had tried repeatedly to organize private exhibitions of their work like the ones mounted by Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet in 1867. This idea finally came to fruition on December 27, 1873, with the establishment of a cooperative—the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc.—that opened its exhibition in the recently vacated studio of the photographer Nadar (35, boulevard des Capucines) on April 15, 1874, shortly before the opening of the official Salon. Although Renoir had not taken part in the first meetings early in the spring of 1873 (attended notably by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley), he signed onto the project, probably after his rejection by that year’s jury, and soon began to play an important role; significantly, the meeting in December 1873 at which the statutes of the cooperative were adopted took place at his residence on the rue Saint-Georges. In addition to Renoir and Monet, the first exhibition included Eugène Boudin, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Armand Guillaumin, Berthe Morisot (who became Madame Eugène Manet, and thus Manet’s sister-in-law, only toward the end of 1874), Pissarro, Sisley, and a few others whose work would probably have passed muster with the jury. Manet abstained, preferring to take part in the Salon. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, with whom Degas had discussed the project, warned Berthe Morisot against the exhibition, suggesting that it would be perceived as a new Salon des Refusés; and, he added, “it is on the second floor, a huge mistake, it will cost one franc to get in, and finally, the public, having gorged itself on painting at the Champs-Elysées [at the Salon], where it will also have to pay, will be quite happy not to pay you a visit. . . . The large exhibition [the Salon] is the only true door; if it doesn’t open, it’s a matter of perseverance; the history of art is full of now-famous rejects.”1 But this resigned and conservative advice was not followed. Far from passing unremarked, the exhibition created quite a stir in artistic circles, and the scandal it caused attracted a large and curious public. Whether pro or con, the critics reviewed it; in principle, many supported the idea of an independent exhibition with no prizes, even when they did not approve of all the participating artists. The novel presentation—small groups of works were hung in surroundings that resembled an artist’s studio

86 (opposite) The Dancer, 1874 First Impressionist exhibition, 1874 Oil on canvas, 55⅞ × 36⅝ in. (142 × 93 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

87 (left) The Parisian, dated 1874 First Impressionist exhibition, 1874 Oil on canvas, 63 × 41¾ in. (160 × 106 cm) National Gallery of Wales, Cardiff

or a collector’s apartment, with reddish brown flocked walls—was appreciated, being judged more congenial than the cavernous halls of the Salon, and the introduction of gaslights for evening viewing was also well received. Taking his cue from the title of a canvas sent by Monet, Impression; Sunrise (a marine painted in Le Havre in 1873 and now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris), a hostile critic mocked the “Impressionists”; the name— eventually adopted by the artists themselves over their initial preference, the “Intransigents”—would stick.2 Renoir presented five or six recent paintings, four of which have been securely identified: The Dancer (plate 86), L’Avant-scène, now known as La Loge or The Theater Box (plate 89), The Parisian (plate 87), and The Harvesters (plate 90).3 These works are important and reveal new commitments on Renoir’s part. Although the press let loose against Monet and Cézanne, it was relatively restrained, even flattering, in its comments about Renoir. Most of the attention fell on the figure paintings, which one critic, Rappel’s Jean Prouvaire, lumped together as a depiction of “three phases that young Parisian ladies generally go through” before they

1874–77: In the Midst of the Impressionist Adventure 105

announcing to the world the fortune that he is dissipating and the emptiness that is within him! This canvas says all that, and much more besides; it is a drawn and painted poem, but a prose poem. M. Renoir is sufficiently young for us to predict success for him if he does not stray from the path he is following.

88 (above) Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883) A Box at the Théâtre des Italiens, 1874 Salon of 1879 Oil on canvas, 389⁄16 × 513⁄16 (98 × 130 cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris

89 (opposite) La Loge, also known as The Theater Box, dated 1874 First Impressionist exhibition, 1874 Oil on canvas, 31½ × 2413⁄16 in. (80 × 63 cm) The Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

can pretend to success as cocottes. Even as he admitted that the artist had not put forward any such interpretation, Prouvaire burned with enthusiasm for The Parisian: “You can scarcely see the toe of her ankle boot, which looks like a little black mouse. Her hat, tilted far back, is daringly coquettish; her dress does not reveal enough of her body. Nothing is more irritating than locked doors. Is it a portrait, this picture? I fear so. The face, a bizarre combination of the old and the childlike, smiles a false smile. Nonetheless, there is something naif about the whole. One gets the impression that this little person is trying to seem chaste. The dress, very well painted, is a celestial blue.” The model in La Loge, by contrast, is one of those female types with her “cheeks made up with pearl white, her eyes aglow with some banal passion . . . , alluring and empty, delicious and stupid.” F. de Gantès, who felt that Degas and Renoir were the high points of the exhibition and dealt at length with La Loge, struck a similar note: Here is an octopus, fully extended, in the full flush of her triumph. The small young man that we can just glimpse in the dim light demonstrates her success and proves that the pearl white coating her face has produced its brilliant effect. How she dominates him, this cynical and vulgar midge. With her vague and vacant eyes, how contemptible she makes the gentleman seem who has rented this box, thereby

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This tendency to “read” Renoir’s representations— quite often in cruel and moralizing ways—as visual equivalents of the naturalist literature associated with Zola, the Goncourt brothers, and Guy de Maupassant was to be a constant among critics of the time, with the result that they often neglected the aesthetic qualities of his painting. Only those critics who were on intimate terms with the artists, such as Jules-Antoine Castagnary, an old friend of Courbet who emphasized Renoir’s “audacity,” paid much attention to his style. Philippe Burty, who was close to Degas, went so far as to affirm, “M. Renoir has a great future. . . . He is partial to the irizations and pearly blonde tones of Turner, but his drawing is much more solid.” The similarity to the great English painter is debatable, but the way he is invoked here shows how difficult it was for Renoir’s contemporaries to describe the freedom and virtuosity of his brush; at the same time, it is an indication of their desire to hail this new painting by placing it under the sign of the masters. The references to Turner were not without an element of snobbery: at the time, this artist, the epitome of genius in the use of color, was familiar only to the “happy few” who had managed to visit London. Armand Silvestre, who preferred Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley, having reservations about the sketchy quality of Renoir’s figures, could not help but admire the charm of the works he showed, noting that “the heads simultaneously recall English painting and Goya.” C. de Malte—a pseudonym for Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam—also let himself be captured by this “trap set by colorists . . . [an] ambush of brilliant colors.” Ernest Chesneau, who had been the secretary of the count Alfred Emilien de Nieuwerkerke under the Second Empire but had embraced the Impressionist cause, admired The Dancer and La Loge as refined expressions of a modern reality and new subject matter first broached by Manet and his student Eva Gonzalès. A similar view was expressed by E. Drumont, who saw something in La Loge that he also found admirable in Monet’s Luncheon (1868–69; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt), “the faithful reproduction of a scene from real life . . . a photograph with color, movement, and light.” L’Artiste’s Marc de Montifaud—the pseudonym of a woman journalist,

1874â&#x20AC;&#x201C;77: In the Midst of the Impressionist Adventure 107

Emilie Chartroule—discussed Renoir at length, bringing her remarks to a close with The Dancer, “an original conception, a kind of fairy molded from earthly forms; nothing could be more alive than this pink flesh, whose luminous and tender tones merge adorably with the gauze of her dress. This is realism of the great school, the one that does not feel obliged to trivialize nature in order to interpret it, and one could apply to M. Renoir these three verses of a sonnet ostensibly uttered by a spontaneously articulate canvas: He knows, oh Parisienne, how to make iridescent your toilette! One sees cupids and flowers emerge from his palette, Eve in vine leaves, and Venus without a corset.” This short anthology shows that contemporary critics knew how to analyze the novelty of Renoir’s art, having been especially taken with La Loge.4 We have very little information about the genesis of these three paintings, all of which are dated 1874. We know nothing, for example, about the model who posed for The Dancer (plate 86) dressed in a classic tutu, a motif that Renoir seems to have later ceded to Degas, who himself showed several ballet scenes in 1874. Renoir was familiar with the grand opera and ballet spectacles of the prewar years, having been brought to performances by Frédéric Bazille and Edmond Maître, but after 1870, as a matter of taste and social routine, he spent more time in the world of the smaller theaters accessible to a larger public, which he introduced into his painting. As for La Loge (plate 89), we must consider a suggestion made by the German art historian Julius MeierGraefe, who indicated that the models were Edmond Renoir, the painter’s brother, a journalist who shared his studio on the rue Saint-Georges, and Nini, a model who was sometimes jokingly called Gueule de Raie, “Fish Face,” a nickname that contrasts sharply with the brilliance of the pearls that drip from her, the delicacy of her features, and her elusive gaze, which attracts that of the viewer without engaging it directly.5 Although there were many earlier depictions of theater boxes in prints and illustrations by Honoré Daumier, Constantin Guys, and the caricaturists in illustrated newspapers,6 the subject was rare in painting, despite the fact that the theater, the opera, and the café-concert were at the heart of the era’s social life. It is not clear from the painting what kind of theater or performance the figures are attending, and Renoir—if we discount his ignorance on this

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point—deliberately scrambled the dress codes: the man’s evening dress is at odds with the “demi-toilette” of his companion, whose arms and shoulders should, according to protocol, be exposed. At the same time, there is something excessive about her pearls, her earrings, and the luxury of her gown. In their treatments of the same subject, both Eva Gonzalès, whose Box at the Théâtre des Italiens (plate 88) was rejected at the Salon of 1874, and Mary Cassatt, whose analogous paintings are somewhat later (1878, Boston Museum of Fine Arts; 1879, Philadelphia Museum of Art), are more respectful of the dress codes in force according to the place and the hour. Renoir neglects the meticulous exactitude of a chronicler or a fashion magazine illustrator so as to let his figures blossom within their sartorial frames, crinkling the fabrics and playing up the materials (satin, chiffon, tulle, velvet; a starched and glistening shirtfront; accessories, white leather gloves, flowers). He does not use the lighting effects and eccentric architectural perspectives typical of Degas’s slightly later depictions of similar subjects. In Renoir’s painting, the audience is indicated obliquely, as if by ricochet, through the gaze that, extrapolating from our own, we imagine it focusing on the couple, and by the lorgnette that the man directs not toward the stage but toward the upper boxes. Renoir suggests more than he describes. “La Loge,” wrote Paul Jamot, “this masterpiece of masterpieces by Renoir, is it not one of those rare paintings in which everything enchants us through surprise, novelty, and the unexpected even as everything about it solicits comparison with the greatest masters of the art?”7 And it is certain that in this painting, which has the controlled spontaneity characteristic of supreme talent, Renoir rivals the greatest colorists, bringing to mind Francisco Goya, Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, artists the painter always frankly admired but whose work, in this instance, rather than providing precise sources, exemplifies a level of achievement to which Renoir can lay claim. In marked contrast with La Loge, The Parisian, with its almost monochromatic blue against an indefinite background, initially seems rather dry. But it has an acidic freshness that sticks in the memory, as do the ease and economy with which Renoir renders the crisp silhouette of this fashionable young woman in all its detail, something for which he had a rare knack. Prouvaire was correct in sensing a portrait here, but the model, Henriette Henriot, disappears behind a generic type, which is what Renoir set out to depict. Nonetheless, it is worth discussing her personality. According to her memoirs, Marie Henriette Alphonsine Grossin, who was born in 1857

and took the theater name of Henriot in 1875, entered the Conservatoire at age fifteen—and thus in 1872—but spent most of her career relegated to secondary roles and provincial tours; she became well known only toward the end of the century, thanks to André Antoine, who gave her a few realist roles at his Théâtre Libre.8 Henriette never married; as she herself reports, the father of her daughter Jane, born in 1878, was a fellow actor. ( Jane met with a horrible end in 1900, at age twenty-two, in a fire at the Comédie-Française, which she had just joined and where she had already had her first successes.) Whatever the nature of her ties with Renoir (or with his brother

Edmond), Henriette Henriot, a redhead with dark eyes, modeled for him frequently between 1873 and 1876. The most surprising painting in which she appears is the very large canvas depicting her en travesti as a page (1875–76, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio), probably a reference to one of her roles.9 In contrast with these large figure paintings, Renoir also showed a much smaller canvas on the boulevard des Capucines, a rather sketchy landscape with figures that revisited the familiar theme of harvesters. Dated 1873, it was probably based on open-air studies made in the environs of Paris. (There is nothing distinctive to facilitate the

90 The Harvesters, dated 1873 First Impressionist exhibition, 1874 Oil on canvas, 23⅝ × 29⅛ in. (60 × 74 cm) Private collection, Switzerland

1874–77: In the Midst of the Impressionist Adventure 109

110

91 (top)

92 (above)

93 (right)

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) The Monet Family in the Garden, 1874 Oil on canvas, 24 × 39⅜ in. (61 × 100 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Woman with a Parasol and a Small Child, c. 1874 Oil on canvas, 18½ × 22½ in. (47 × 56 cm) Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Camille Monet and Her Son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1874 Oil on canvas, 20 × 26¾ in. (51 × 68 cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Renoir

1874â&#x20AC;&#x201C;77: In the Midst of the Impressionist Adventure

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T h e I m p r e ssi o n is t S a l e o f 1875

96 Claude Monet at His Easel, 1875 Second Impressionist exhibition, 1876 Oil on canvas, 33 × 23⅝ in. (84 × 60 cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris

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For Renoir, the last significant event of 1874 was the death of his father, Léonard Renoir, on December 22, 1874, at the age of seventy-five. Living on his small capital, he resided in Louveciennes, on the rue des Voisins. Renoir and his younger brother Edmond, who were both present, informed the local authorities of his death. The painter left a beautiful portrait of his father; dated 1869, it shows a severe man whose features are consistent with the brief description transmitted to us by Jean Renoir.14

Doubtless disappointed by the inefficacy of group exhibitions in finding buyers, Renoir, Monet, Sisley, and Berthe Morisot decided to organize an auction of their work, which took place at Hôtel Drouot on March 24, 1875. It was rare for living artists to resort to such a practice, usually the province of estate sales (for example, the Corot and Millet sales, which also took place in 1875), but the previous year Charles-François Daubigny had organized a successful auction. Furthermore, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley had seen their works attain good prices at the voluntary sale of a private collection, that of Ernest Hoschedé, on January 13, 1874. Admittedly, close examination of the results reveals that the interventions of Durand-Ruel and the artists themselves, who bought back their own work to safeguard their prices, were decisive. But as Théodore Duret emphasized in a letter to Pissarro after the Hoschedé sale, such auctions were an important means of increasing artists’ notoriety, exposing them to a larger circle than the one for independent exhibitions.15 Vollard has Renoir say that the initiative for organizing the sale had been his,16 but this is by no means certain, given how the idea was in the air; it might have come from Durand-Ruel. As with the Hoschedé sale, the auctioneer was Charles Pillet, the “prince of bids” at the time, and the expert adviser was Durand-Ruel. Philippe Burty wrote a preface for the sale catalog. Shortly beforehand, Manet manifested his support by writing to the famous Albert Wolff, journalist-critic at Le Figaro, requesting that he announce it there.17 So everything was in place to make the occasion an event. On the day of the sale, however, chaos reigned at Hôtel Drouot: “There was a crowd in room 3. . . . Half the public was pro and the other half contra. You would not have believed the gales of laughter when certain canvases came up for bidding. A certain ‘Source’ was greeted with particular hilarity. . . . An argument very nearly broke out over it.”18 The painting in question was by Renoir, who bought it back at the sale; it was probably the Nymph by a Stream (1869–70) now in the National Gallery in London, a wan and angular female nude that, while painted with brio and boasting a distinctive placement of the figure within the frame, seems strange and aggressive even today.19 For Renoir, as for his colleagues, the experiment proved disastrous, bringing him only 2,251 francs for twenty paintings, the prices having ranged from 50 to 300 francs. Durand-Ruel paid the most for a Renoir, 300 francs for The Pont-Neuf (plate 78), and acquired one of

his views of Argenteuil; in addition to “The Source,” the artist bought back a landscape, After the Storm (c. 1872; private collection).20 The list of other successful bidders includes the names of two critics, Arsène Houssaye and Emile Blémont (under his real name, Petitdidier), and those of two painters who belonged to the cooperative of 1874, the Swiss Auguste de Molins and, significantly, Henri Rouart. This graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, an amateur painter and an industrialist, made only modest purchases at the sale, but he already owned Riding in the Bois de Boulogne (plate 77), rejected for the Salon of 1873,21 and he would later acquire The Parisian (plate 87), which makes him one of the first important collectors of Renoir. Rouart, a close friend of Degas (who painted his portrait many times; “my only family,” he once said of him), would become one of the most distinguished collectors of his generation, acquiring works by the old masters as well as modern paintings; his estate sales in 1912 and 1913 (at which the Renoirs resurfaced) signaled the consecration of Impressionism. The purchasers of works by Renoir also included Léon Monet, the painter’s brother, who seems to have been bidding for himself. The “Hecht” who bought a nude entitled Before the Bath (as Torso; plate 98) was probably Henri Hecht, a prominent collector of the period who was on cordial terms with Manet and Degas. Also among the buyers were Gabriel Thomas, a cousin of Berthe Morisot (which explains his presence at the sale) and the financier of the Eiffel Tower, who would later commission work from Maurice Denis for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

Two names, those of Jean Dollfus and Georges Charpentier, call for more detailed comment. Jean Dollfus, a member of the dynasty behind the textile firm DollfusMieg et Cie, quickly gave up business to devote himself to his collection of old masters, modern painting, and japonaiseries, the considerable size of which became apparent at his estate sale in 1912, when it was dispersed. He became interested in Renoir quite early, buying a small variant of La Loge (private collection) at the 1875 sale as well as Head of a Woman (Rau collection) and Claude Monet at his Easel (plate 96) on the occasion of the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876; moreover,

97 (left) Renoir c. 1875 Anonymous photograph Musée d’Orsay, Paris

98 (above) Torso, c. 1873–74 Oil on canvas, 31⅞ × 24⅞ in. (81 × 63 cm) The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

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Le Peletier) in Paris was considered the crucible of contemporary art.42 The second exhibition of the group was notable as well for the entry onto the scene of the young Gustave Caillebotte. The letter inviting Caillebotte to take part in the 1876 exhibition was signed by Degas, Renoir, and Henri Rouart, but it is not known how this former student of Léon Bonnat, rejected by the Salon jury, came to the attention of the Impressionist circle. His considerable talent, justification enough for their interest, was coupled with an exceptional generosity; possessed of a fortune inherited from his father, a provisioner to the French army, he would become a patron to his colleagues, and thus heir to the role of the deceased Bazille, albeit with much greater means at his disposal. He was soon on cordial terms with all the artists in the group, buying works from them at a time when they were having difficulty developing a clientele; he became especially close to Renoir, whom he chose to be executor of his will. In a gesture both emotional—he had just lost his brother René—and very bourgeois, Caillebotte, on November 3, 1876, aged twenty-eight, executed a will stipulating that a large sum from his estate was to be used to organize an exhibition in 1878 featuring the principal exhibitors of the 1876 show, and in which he left his collection of paintings by the same artists to the French state. He had already begun to acquire the works by Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and of course Renoir (The Swing, plate 114) that he would show at the third exhibition of the group. He rented an apartment at 6, rue Le Peletier at his own expense and absorbed any otherwise uncovered costs; he also did his best to settle disagreements among the participating artists, thereby paving the way to the third independent exhibition, at which he himself exhibited, among other works, his large painting Paris Street; Rainy Day (plate 115).

111 (opposite) Woman at the Piano, c. 1875 Second Impressionist exhibition, 1876 Oil on canvas, 36⅝ × 29⅛ in. (93 × 74 cm) The Art Institute of Chicago

112 (top) Delphine Legrand, 1875 Second Impressionist exhibition, 1876 Oil on canvas, 31⅞ × 23¼ in. (81 × 59 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art

113 (bottom) Jeanne Durand-Ruel, dated 1876 Oil on canvas, 44½ × 29⅛ in. (113 × 74 cm) The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

1877: T h e T h i r d I m p r e ssi o n is t Exhibition Reconstituted around a kernel of significant artists in the group (there were fewer secondary adherents this time), namely Caillebotte, Cézanne (absent in 1876), Degas, Guillaumin, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, this exhibition seemed more “Impressionist” than the earlier ones, not least because the term was definitively adopted and even appeared on the posters.43 Caillebotte may have taken care of the financial side, but Renoir made a significant contribution in terms of organization.

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121 The Seine at Champrosay, 1876 Third Impressionist exhibition, 1877 Oil on canvas, 21⅝ × 26 in. (55 × 66 cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris

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Dancing at the M o u lin de la Galette In a conversation with Vollard, Renoir claimed to have used 1,200 francs he had been paid for a portrait to rent, in 1875, a house in Montmartre with a garden that would allow him to paint several works in the open air, among them the portrait of Jeanne Samary, a “torso of Anna” (probably the Study exhibited in 1876), Dancing

at the Moulin de la Galette (plate 124), and The Swing (plate 114).50 The year is debatable, since Rivière—who, although not always trustworthy, was an eyewitness here—situates the episode in May 1876,51 which is consistent with the year inscribed on Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette. In any case, Renoir’s account draws attention to his practice of working outside for the light, as did Monet, but doing his best to avoid the curious onlookers in public places. Georges Rivière, who posed

for Dancing, discussed this large canvas several times in L’Impressioniste, a short-lived periodical, first published at the time of the exhibition, that realized a project that had been called for in the cooperative’s statutes of 1874. He wrote:

122 Garden in the Rue Cortot, Montmartre, 1876 Probably the Dahlias shown at the third Impressionist exhibition, 1877 Oil on canvas, 61 × 39⅜ in. (155 × 100 cm) Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

The Moulin de la Galette is a popular dance hall whose novelty derives from its location at the top of the Butte Montmartre, in the middle of fields of alfalfa, tall grasses, and nettles that are visible above the fences that surround it. . . . A large rectangular room with a low ceiling and poor lighting, a courtyard planted with acacia, stunted and ill-kempt, and furnished with tables and benches painted green: that about sums up the place. . . . M. Renoir painted his picture during a daytime dance: in other words, when young girls escaped the maternal hearth on the sly to dance the polka and show off their summer dresses. All the qualities of this painting can be summed up in a few words. It was painted on the spot, and the figures in it were regulars of the place. Noise, laughter, movement, sunlight in an atmosphere of youth: such is the Dancing of M. Renoir. . . . It is a page of history, a precious monument of Parisian life, and rigorously accurate. No one before him had dreamed of depicting an event of daily life on so large a canvas. . . . M. Renoir and his friends have understood that historical painting is not a matter of making illustrations, more or less amusing, of tales from the past. . . . May those who want to make history paintings paint the history of their own period, instead of stirring up the dust of centuries past. . . . Treating a subject for its colors and not for the subject itself, that’s what distinguishes the Impressionists from other painters. . . . It is above all this pursuit, this new way of broaching a subject, that makes M. Renoir so unique; instead of looking for the secrets of the old masters, of Velázquez and Franz Hals, like the headstrong children of the quai Malaquais [the students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts], he has sought and found a contemporary note.52 Although a bit heavy-handed, these explanations are useful reminders of the originality of Renoir’s choice of subject matter here, as with the earlier La Grenouillère, and of his boldness in undertaking to paint this prosaic subject on so grand a scale, thereby elevating it to the level

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L’AUTEUR : ANNE DISTEL

Renoir