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Lot Essay
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.
Renoir was delighted at the birth on 21 March 1885 of his first child, a son he named Pierre, by his companion Aline Charigot, whom he married five years later. That summer he commenced work on the first of three paintings that show Aline nursing the infant, while he was still only a few months old. Jean Renoir, the second of the artist's three sons and a celebrated film director, wrote: "The birth of my brother Pierre was to cause a definite revolution in Renoir's life. The theories aired at the Nouvelles Athènes [a Paris café where the Impressionists congregated] were now made to seem unimportant by the dimples in a baby's bottom. As he eagerly sketched his son... he concentrated on rendering the velvety flesh of the child; and through this very submission, Renoir began to rebuild his inner world" (Renoir, My Father, New York, 1962, p. 233). While family life kindled Renoir's interest in this subject, his treatment of it derived from his admiration of the Renaissance masters he had seen during his trip to Italy in the fall of 1881, especially Raphael. "Raphael's paintings came to represent for him the image of motherhood: in Italy, he remembered 'every woman nursing a child is a Virgin by Raphael.' When he wanted to recreate this theme in his own art, he adopted a Raphael-like combination of closely observed gesture with simple, balanced structure" (J. House, Renoir, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 249).
Renoir was delighted at the birth on 21 March 1885 of his first child, a son he named Pierre, by his companion Aline Charigot, whom he married five years later. That summer he commenced work on the first of three paintings that show Aline nursing the infant, while he was still only a few months old. Jean Renoir, the second of the artist's three sons and a celebrated film director, wrote: "The birth of my brother Pierre was to cause a definite revolution in Renoir's life. The theories aired at the Nouvelles Athènes [a Paris café where the Impressionists congregated] were now made to seem unimportant by the dimples in a baby's bottom. As he eagerly sketched his son... he concentrated on rendering the velvety flesh of the child; and through this very submission, Renoir began to rebuild his inner world" (Renoir, My Father, New York, 1962, p. 233). While family life kindled Renoir's interest in this subject, his treatment of it derived from his admiration of the Renaissance masters he had seen during his trip to Italy in the fall of 1881, especially Raphael. "Raphael's paintings came to represent for him the image of motherhood: in Italy, he remembered 'every woman nursing a child is a Virgin by Raphael.' When he wanted to recreate this theme in his own art, he adopted a Raphael-like combination of closely observed gesture with simple, balanced structure" (J. House, Renoir, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 249).