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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre Auguste Renoir being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
Renoir spent the summer months between 1879-1880 at the country château of one of his most important patrons, Paul-Antoine Bérard, in Wargemont not far from Dieppe on the Normandy coast. His visits to the small towns and villages along the Channel coastline and the landscape paintings he produced were a welcomed respite from the commissioned portraiture he was obliged to paint for rich Parisians in order to earn a living. His enthusiasm for the expansive horizons and the vastness of the sea, sky and coastline is apparent in L'église de Varangeville et les falaises. In the present painting, as in the series of landscapes he created at this time, the artist endeavoured to depict 'the ethereal interplay of land, air and water at various times of the day and under changing weather conditions. Striving to capture aspects of atmosphere, he restricted his palette to unusually subdued colors applied in thin layers of paint' (G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Tübingen, 1996, p. 193).
Renoir spent the summer months between 1879-1880 at the country château of one of his most important patrons, Paul-Antoine Bérard, in Wargemont not far from Dieppe on the Normandy coast. His visits to the small towns and villages along the Channel coastline and the landscape paintings he produced were a welcomed respite from the commissioned portraiture he was obliged to paint for rich Parisians in order to earn a living. His enthusiasm for the expansive horizons and the vastness of the sea, sky and coastline is apparent in L'église de Varangeville et les falaises. In the present painting, as in the series of landscapes he created at this time, the artist endeavoured to depict 'the ethereal interplay of land, air and water at various times of the day and under changing weather conditions. Striving to capture aspects of atmosphere, he restricted his palette to unusually subdued colors applied in thin layers of paint' (G. Adriani, Renoir, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Tübingen, 1996, p. 193).