.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
We are grateful to Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville for confirming that this painting is included in their Bernheim-Jeune archives as an authentic work.
Nature morte au melon et au vase de fleurs is a rare example of the few, isolated still-lifes--flower and fruit compilations--that appear in Renoir's early work. Renoir focused most of his energy into landscape paintings, figural compositions, and portraits, and he spent the summer months painting en plein air alongside Claude Monet in Argenteuil. Their parallel picturesque garden and riverside views from this period are well known, yet both artists also experimented with a range of contemporary still-life styles as early as the 1870s. Renoir noted that Monet's still-lifes were fetching high sums and were sought after by collectors, especially Paul Durand-Ruel. Monet introduced Renoir to Durand-Ruel in the spring of the same year, and one of the first two paintings that the dealer-collector purchased from Renoir was a still-life.
In the present painting, a bowl with an artfully arranged sliced cantaloupe sits on a shiny wood table next to a glass bud vase with three blooms. Characteristics of Renoir's Impressionist style emerge in this scene, such as the loose, fluid brushwork that articulates the juicy slices of ripe melon, and the decoratively checkered pattern that emphasizes the two-dimensional surface of the canvas. The juncture between the melon, table, and background creates a shallow space that jars with the deliberately empty expanse of table at the bottom of the painting. By emphasizing this vacant area, Renoir references and rejects the creation of space through repoussoir, the placement of a large figure or object in the immediate foreground of a painting to increase the illusion of depth in the rest of the picture. The flat color and high vantage point reflect Renoir's interest in Japanese prints, which the painter also encountered through his recent acquaintance Theodore Duret, a wealthy collector and art critic who had a large collection of Japanese prints and artifacts.
Renoir's early still-lifes also manifest the painter's close relationship with Edouard Manet, whom the Impressionists claimed as a source of inspiration and leadership. Manet concentrated on still-life painting with particular intensity from 1864 to 1869, the year that Renoir and his colleagues such as Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley started meeting with Manet and his circle to discuss art at the Café Guerbois on the Grande rue des Batignolles in the seventeenth arrondissement. Renoir's choice of a melon in a bowl on a dark table in the present work may be a reference to Manet's still- lifes such as Nature morte avec melon et pêches, c. 1866. Indeed, Renoir selected this genre in 1871 to pay tribute to Manet in Nature morte au bouquet et à l'éventail (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), which contains references to his colleague's Portrait of Emil Zola, 1868 (Museé d'Orsay, Paris) and his notorious Olympia, 1863 (Museé d'Orsay, Paris).
Nature morte au melon et au vase de fleurs is a rare example of the few, isolated still-lifes--flower and fruit compilations--that appear in Renoir's early work. Renoir focused most of his energy into landscape paintings, figural compositions, and portraits, and he spent the summer months painting en plein air alongside Claude Monet in Argenteuil. Their parallel picturesque garden and riverside views from this period are well known, yet both artists also experimented with a range of contemporary still-life styles as early as the 1870s. Renoir noted that Monet's still-lifes were fetching high sums and were sought after by collectors, especially Paul Durand-Ruel. Monet introduced Renoir to Durand-Ruel in the spring of the same year, and one of the first two paintings that the dealer-collector purchased from Renoir was a still-life.
In the present painting, a bowl with an artfully arranged sliced cantaloupe sits on a shiny wood table next to a glass bud vase with three blooms. Characteristics of Renoir's Impressionist style emerge in this scene, such as the loose, fluid brushwork that articulates the juicy slices of ripe melon, and the decoratively checkered pattern that emphasizes the two-dimensional surface of the canvas. The juncture between the melon, table, and background creates a shallow space that jars with the deliberately empty expanse of table at the bottom of the painting. By emphasizing this vacant area, Renoir references and rejects the creation of space through repoussoir, the placement of a large figure or object in the immediate foreground of a painting to increase the illusion of depth in the rest of the picture. The flat color and high vantage point reflect Renoir's interest in Japanese prints, which the painter also encountered through his recent acquaintance Theodore Duret, a wealthy collector and art critic who had a large collection of Japanese prints and artifacts.
Renoir's early still-lifes also manifest the painter's close relationship with Edouard Manet, whom the Impressionists claimed as a source of inspiration and leadership. Manet concentrated on still-life painting with particular intensity from 1864 to 1869, the year that Renoir and his colleagues such as Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley started meeting with Manet and his circle to discuss art at the Café Guerbois on the Grande rue des Batignolles in the seventeenth arrondissement. Renoir's choice of a melon in a bowl on a dark table in the present work may be a reference to Manet's still- lifes such as Nature morte avec melon et pêches, c. 1866. Indeed, Renoir selected this genre in 1871 to pay tribute to Manet in Nature morte au bouquet et à l'éventail (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), which contains references to his colleague's Portrait of Emil Zola, 1868 (Museé d'Orsay, Paris) and his notorious Olympia, 1863 (Museé d'Orsay, Paris).