.jpg?w=1)
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.
“I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch,” Renoir wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888, full of enthusiasm for his latest efforts. “This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting—like Fragonard, but not so good” (quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121).
This approach—which represented a stylistic change in Renoir's works after the controversial, Ingres-inspired method that he had cultivated mid-decade—plainly informs the present Jeune fille lisant, a softly brushed boudoir scene depicting a young woman absorbed in her reading. The model is clad in a blue corset over a gauzy white shift, which slips from one shoulder to reveal an expanse of creamy skin that catches the light; her dark, glossy hair runs long down her back. The pink of her skirt echoes the youthful flush on her cheeks, providing a metaphor for her natural, unstudied beauty. Unlike eighteenth-century images of women reading, which often presented the activity as charged with erotic implications, Renoir’s image is suffused with a hushed and dreamy intimacy.
Women reading forms an important recurring motif in Renoir’s oeuvre, despite his professed aversion to all literary influences in visual art. “For me, a painting should be something pleasant, joyous, and pretty,” he insisted, “yes, pretty!” (quoted in ibid., p. 16). Books distracted his models from the difficult task of posing at length, allowing him to work without haste. In the present painting, he has depicted the young woman in profile, seemingly unaware of the artist. The harmonious, integrated palette of warm tones heightens the effect of a private, self-contained world.
The “new manner” that Renoir described to Durand-Ruel was an immediate success, a most welcome development after the hostile response that his Ingres-inspired Grandes baigneuses had received when exhibited at the Galerie Georges Petit. In 1890, secure at last—just months shy of age fifty—that he could support a family, Renoir finally married Aline Charigot, his long-time companion and the mother of his young son Pierre. “I’m in demand again on the market,” the artist wrote contentedly to his friend and patron Paul Berard. “If nothing happens to disturb my work, it will go like clockwork” (quoted in B.E. White, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 189).
“I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch,” Renoir wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888, full of enthusiasm for his latest efforts. “This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting—like Fragonard, but not so good” (quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121).
This approach—which represented a stylistic change in Renoir's works after the controversial, Ingres-inspired method that he had cultivated mid-decade—plainly informs the present Jeune fille lisant, a softly brushed boudoir scene depicting a young woman absorbed in her reading. The model is clad in a blue corset over a gauzy white shift, which slips from one shoulder to reveal an expanse of creamy skin that catches the light; her dark, glossy hair runs long down her back. The pink of her skirt echoes the youthful flush on her cheeks, providing a metaphor for her natural, unstudied beauty. Unlike eighteenth-century images of women reading, which often presented the activity as charged with erotic implications, Renoir’s image is suffused with a hushed and dreamy intimacy.
Women reading forms an important recurring motif in Renoir’s oeuvre, despite his professed aversion to all literary influences in visual art. “For me, a painting should be something pleasant, joyous, and pretty,” he insisted, “yes, pretty!” (quoted in ibid., p. 16). Books distracted his models from the difficult task of posing at length, allowing him to work without haste. In the present painting, he has depicted the young woman in profile, seemingly unaware of the artist. The harmonious, integrated palette of warm tones heightens the effect of a private, self-contained world.
The “new manner” that Renoir described to Durand-Ruel was an immediate success, a most welcome development after the hostile response that his Ingres-inspired Grandes baigneuses had received when exhibited at the Galerie Georges Petit. In 1890, secure at last—just months shy of age fifty—that he could support a family, Renoir finally married Aline Charigot, his long-time companion and the mother of his young son Pierre. “I’m in demand again on the market,” the artist wrote contentedly to his friend and patron Paul Berard. “If nothing happens to disturb my work, it will go like clockwork” (quoted in B.E. White, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 189).