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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the critical catalogue of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's paintings being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Paysage, entrée de village avec femme et enfant depicts a scene of rural life. Coming from the fields and approaching the village's first spare houses, a mother and child appear from around the corner on a country road. Lit up by the sun, the image is suffused with joy and serenity. Contrasting with the light blue of the sky, the landscape is bathed in golden oranges and reds, tones that dominated Renoir's palette in those years.
Renoir moved to Southern France at the beginning of the 1900s. By that time, the artist had gained wide recognition and the numerous successful sales of his paintings allowed him to build, in 1903, a family house at Collettes (Cagnes-sur-mer). Surrounded by a garden of olive trees and brightened up by the presence of 'Coco' - Claude, the artist's youngest child born in 1901 - the new country house became Renoir's studio and place of inspiration. It is possible that Coco and Gabrielle, the children's governess, were the models for the picture, as both had by then become important sources of inspiration for Renoir.
'Pain goes away, but beauty stays', Renoir once said to Matisse, a passionate admirer of the artist's late style. 'I am utterly happy and I will not die without having first completed my chef-d'oeuvre' (P. A. Renoir, quoted in V. Journiac, 'Renoir à Cagnes', pp. 88-95, Renoir au XX siècle, exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2010, p.95). Paysage, entrée de village avec femme et enfant captures the joyful contemplation of the countryside through which Renoir kept heroically exploring the possibilities of his art.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Paysage, entrée de village avec femme et enfant depicts a scene of rural life. Coming from the fields and approaching the village's first spare houses, a mother and child appear from around the corner on a country road. Lit up by the sun, the image is suffused with joy and serenity. Contrasting with the light blue of the sky, the landscape is bathed in golden oranges and reds, tones that dominated Renoir's palette in those years.
Renoir moved to Southern France at the beginning of the 1900s. By that time, the artist had gained wide recognition and the numerous successful sales of his paintings allowed him to build, in 1903, a family house at Collettes (Cagnes-sur-mer). Surrounded by a garden of olive trees and brightened up by the presence of 'Coco' - Claude, the artist's youngest child born in 1901 - the new country house became Renoir's studio and place of inspiration. It is possible that Coco and Gabrielle, the children's governess, were the models for the picture, as both had by then become important sources of inspiration for Renoir.
'Pain goes away, but beauty stays', Renoir once said to Matisse, a passionate admirer of the artist's late style. 'I am utterly happy and I will not die without having first completed my chef-d'oeuvre' (P. A. Renoir, quoted in V. Journiac, 'Renoir à Cagnes', pp. 88-95, Renoir au XX siècle, exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2010, p.95). Paysage, entrée de village avec femme et enfant captures the joyful contemplation of the countryside through which Renoir kept heroically exploring the possibilities of his art.