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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Pierre-Auguste Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
This work will be included in the second supplement to the Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles de Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice and Floriane Dauberville, published by Bernheim-Jeune.
Depicting an array of colorful blooms, Bouquet d’anémones offers a vivid example of the flaming tones that Renoir embraced with enthusiasm at the beginning of the 1900s. Executed with broad, rich brushstrokes and exploring a wide range of red, pink and yellow tones, the picture illustrates Renoir’s virtuosity, as it evokes the frailty of the flowers while maintaining a certain immediacy of execution. Although tapping into the classic tradition of flower paintings, works such as Bouquet d’anémones constituted a sort of symbolic transposition of the female body for Renoir. The sensuous, fleshy petals of the flowers became vehicles for the representation of the female body, a subject that occupied him consistently throughout the 1900s. Renoir confessed to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, that he saw flowers as “research of flesh-tones for a nude” (quoted in M. Lucy and J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 263).
A modernistic flattening of space can also be seen in Renoir’s still-lifes, landscapes and figure paintings after 1900. This tendency is especially discernible in the present work, just as it may be observed in Claude Monet's late paintings of his gardens. By doing away with a horizon and a conventional sense of distance his paintings functioned without a clearly-defined focal point. To use a term that is often applied to post-World War II abstraction, Renoir's paintings in this manner possess an "all-over" look. The present painting pushes the blooms to the very edges of the canvas, obliterating the recognizable bouquet referenced in the title.
In a remarkable passage from his memoir of his father, the celebrated film director Jean Renoir wrote: "During his later years he had seen new groups and schools arise; Kandinsky and his followers had pioneered an original kind of art. Renoir sympathized with the aims of abstract painting. At times he too had been tempted to dispense with a subject and renounce appearances altogether. Only his modesty held him back. He remained quite content to express his deepest feelings under recognizable forms, as a landscape or a bouquet of flowers or a young girl. So he strode with giant steps toward the summit where mind and matter become one, knowing full well that no man living can attain these heights. Each stroke of his brush bore witness to this intoxicating approach to revelation. His nudes and his roses declared to men of this century, already deep in their task of destruction, the stability of the eternal balance of nature" (Renoir, My Father, New York, 1962, p. 421).
This work will be included in the second supplement to the Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles de Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice and Floriane Dauberville, published by Bernheim-Jeune.
Depicting an array of colorful blooms, Bouquet d’anémones offers a vivid example of the flaming tones that Renoir embraced with enthusiasm at the beginning of the 1900s. Executed with broad, rich brushstrokes and exploring a wide range of red, pink and yellow tones, the picture illustrates Renoir’s virtuosity, as it evokes the frailty of the flowers while maintaining a certain immediacy of execution. Although tapping into the classic tradition of flower paintings, works such as Bouquet d’anémones constituted a sort of symbolic transposition of the female body for Renoir. The sensuous, fleshy petals of the flowers became vehicles for the representation of the female body, a subject that occupied him consistently throughout the 1900s. Renoir confessed to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, that he saw flowers as “research of flesh-tones for a nude” (quoted in M. Lucy and J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 263).
A modernistic flattening of space can also be seen in Renoir’s still-lifes, landscapes and figure paintings after 1900. This tendency is especially discernible in the present work, just as it may be observed in Claude Monet's late paintings of his gardens. By doing away with a horizon and a conventional sense of distance his paintings functioned without a clearly-defined focal point. To use a term that is often applied to post-World War II abstraction, Renoir's paintings in this manner possess an "all-over" look. The present painting pushes the blooms to the very edges of the canvas, obliterating the recognizable bouquet referenced in the title.
In a remarkable passage from his memoir of his father, the celebrated film director Jean Renoir wrote: "During his later years he had seen new groups and schools arise; Kandinsky and his followers had pioneered an original kind of art. Renoir sympathized with the aims of abstract painting. At times he too had been tempted to dispense with a subject and renounce appearances altogether. Only his modesty held him back. He remained quite content to express his deepest feelings under recognizable forms, as a landscape or a bouquet of flowers or a young girl. So he strode with giant steps toward the summit where mind and matter become one, knowing full well that no man living can attain these heights. Each stroke of his brush bore witness to this intoxicating approach to revelation. His nudes and his roses declared to men of this century, already deep in their task of destruction, the stability of the eternal balance of nature" (Renoir, My Father, New York, 1962, p. 421).