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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute and established from the archive funds of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
This work will be included in volume IV or subsequent volumes of the catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles de Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville and published by Bernheim-Jeune.
In the 1890s Renoir had developed a very intimate style of portraiture that was well suited to portraying the family members, friends and neighbours he asked to pose for him. The sitter for the present work was originally thought to be Gabrielle Renard, who at the age of 16 joined the Renoirs' household in 1894, a month before Jean was born. Gabrielle remained with the family for the next twenty years, until her marriage to the American painter Conrad Slade in 1912. She soon became indispensable to the Renoirs, not only looking after the children and, later, the increasingly infirm artist, but also modelling frequently for Renoir, both as the protagonist of his domestic scenes and as the voluptuous nude which so preoccupied the artist post-1900. However more recently, it has been suggested that the sitter is Marie Dupuis, another of Renoir's favoured models, as she typically wore her hair pulled back in this style. Affectionately called la boulangère by the artist, Marie Dupuis hailed from his wife's home town of Essoyes and joined the household as a servant in 1899.
The sitter is portrayed in a very private moment, adjusting her necklace in the mirror with a portrait of 'Coco' on the wall behind her. 'Coco' was Renoir's third son, Claude, who was born in 1901. The painting depicted in the background was probably painted a year or two earlier than the present work and is remarkably similar to the portrait now in the Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Assis Chateaubriand São Paolo, Brazil. As Jean Renoir later recalled, Coco was 'one of the most prolific inspirations my father ever had' (J. Renoir, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, mon père, Paris, 1981) and Renoir's paintings of him provide a complete catalogue of the first eight years of his life.
When painting a female figure, Renoir sought to reveal that which still remained in her from the child within - the luminous softness of the skin, her delicate flesh, and the character of her inner youth. As George Rivière was to comment, 'In Renoir's figure painting, portraiture deserves a place unto itself. For no other artist has looked so deeply into his sitter's soul, nor captured its essence with such economy' (quoted in C. Bailey, Renoir's Portraits, Impression of an Age, Ottawa, 1997, p. 1). In his female portraits, Renoir paints with sympathy and sensibility but never submits to the negative constraints of portraiture: 'Without judgement, he captures the presence of his model. As he viewed it, the face was the eyes and the mouth - the rest was but a caress. The eyes and the mouth enclose the beauty and femininity of a woman, while being the portals of the human being leading towards the soul and into the flesh' (M. Florisone, Renoir, London, 1942, p. 26).
This work will be included in volume IV or subsequent volumes of the catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles de Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville and published by Bernheim-Jeune.
In the 1890s Renoir had developed a very intimate style of portraiture that was well suited to portraying the family members, friends and neighbours he asked to pose for him. The sitter for the present work was originally thought to be Gabrielle Renard, who at the age of 16 joined the Renoirs' household in 1894, a month before Jean was born. Gabrielle remained with the family for the next twenty years, until her marriage to the American painter Conrad Slade in 1912. She soon became indispensable to the Renoirs, not only looking after the children and, later, the increasingly infirm artist, but also modelling frequently for Renoir, both as the protagonist of his domestic scenes and as the voluptuous nude which so preoccupied the artist post-1900. However more recently, it has been suggested that the sitter is Marie Dupuis, another of Renoir's favoured models, as she typically wore her hair pulled back in this style. Affectionately called la boulangère by the artist, Marie Dupuis hailed from his wife's home town of Essoyes and joined the household as a servant in 1899.
The sitter is portrayed in a very private moment, adjusting her necklace in the mirror with a portrait of 'Coco' on the wall behind her. 'Coco' was Renoir's third son, Claude, who was born in 1901. The painting depicted in the background was probably painted a year or two earlier than the present work and is remarkably similar to the portrait now in the Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Assis Chateaubriand São Paolo, Brazil. As Jean Renoir later recalled, Coco was 'one of the most prolific inspirations my father ever had' (J. Renoir, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, mon père, Paris, 1981) and Renoir's paintings of him provide a complete catalogue of the first eight years of his life.
When painting a female figure, Renoir sought to reveal that which still remained in her from the child within - the luminous softness of the skin, her delicate flesh, and the character of her inner youth. As George Rivière was to comment, 'In Renoir's figure painting, portraiture deserves a place unto itself. For no other artist has looked so deeply into his sitter's soul, nor captured its essence with such economy' (quoted in C. Bailey, Renoir's Portraits, Impression of an Age, Ottawa, 1997, p. 1). In his female portraits, Renoir paints with sympathy and sensibility but never submits to the negative constraints of portraiture: 'Without judgement, he captures the presence of his model. As he viewed it, the face was the eyes and the mouth - the rest was but a caress. The eyes and the mouth enclose the beauty and femininity of a woman, while being the portals of the human being leading towards the soul and into the flesh' (M. Florisone, Renoir, London, 1942, p. 26).