Danseuse au tambourin I

Details

After Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1814-1919) and Louis Morel (1887-1975)
Danseuse au tambourin I
signed 'Renoir' (lower centre left); numbered 'A', stamped with the foundry mark 'CIRE C.VALSUANI PERDUE' and inscribed 'BRONZE' (lower right)
bronze with dark brown patina
24 3/8 x 17 3/8 in. (62 x 44.2 cm.)
Conceived in plaster in 1918

Provenance

Galerie Tanner, Zurich.
Emil G. Bührle, Zurich, by whom acquired from the above in 1936, and thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature

P. Haesaerts, Renoir Sculptor, New York, 1947, no. 22 (the terracotta version illustrated, pl. XLIV).
B. Ehrlich White, Renoir, his life, art, and letters, New York, 1984, p. 277 (the terracotta version illustrated).

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

Sale Room Notice

Please note that this lot is subject to the Artist Resale Right Royalty. However, as Renoir is no longer in copyright, only half the royalty (in respect of the estate of Louis Morel) is payable.

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Lot Essay

In 1918, after the departure of Richard Guino, with whom he had collaborated on roughly twenty sculptures, Renoir engaged the services of the young sculptor Louis Morel. Together they created three terracotta reliefs on Dionysian themes, including the present subject. "It is a moving fact that the very last sculptures of this old man, who was paralyzed and not far from his end, evoked music and dance" (P. Hæsærts, op. cit., p. 33). As Guino had done before him, Morel modelled the reliefs from drawings by Renoir, whose hands were arthritic and incapable of working in even the most malleable materials. Renoir had planned a further relief depicting a dancing figure wearing a wreath, but became too ill to continue working on it.

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