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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the critical catalogue of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's paintings being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.
This work will be included in volume III or the following volumes of the catalogue raisonné of paintings, pastels, drawings and watercolours of Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice et Michel Dauberville at the Editions Bernheim-Jeune.
Painted in 1892, Nu au chapeau de paille assis en bordure de mer combines several of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's favourite motifs: landscape, the sea and most importantly the young woman. Indeed, it is for his sensual, sensuous depictions of women that Renoir is best known. Here, the sitter is shown against the backdrop of a landscape which speaks of Renoir's status as one of the leading pioneers of Impressionism. Here, the subject is shown in a pose much favoured by Renoir, as is evidenced by its similarities to another of his paintings from the same year showing a young girl bathing, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. During this period, Renoir was famed both for his depictions of women and for his landscapes, and it is a telling indication of the equal status that each of these themes held for the artist himself that he travelled extensively during this period, not least to seaside towns, seeking inspirational vantage points that would result in vistas such as the one here.
In Nu au chapeau de paille assis en bordure de mer, the feathered brushstrokes which have become so iconic are in evidence, caressing the forms of the rocks in the background, the sea and the subject herself with equal delicacy and delight. Looking at this picture it is easy to see why, writing only two years after it was painted, Gustave Geffroy would exclaim that the scenes and beings in his works, 'are imbued by Renoir's poetry, a happy, impetuous, painter's poetry, which throbs and quivers and feeds on warmth and light' (Geffroy, quoted in N. Wadley (ed.), Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 188).
This work will be included in volume III or the following volumes of the catalogue raisonné of paintings, pastels, drawings and watercolours of Renoir being prepared by Guy-Patrice et Michel Dauberville at the Editions Bernheim-Jeune.
Painted in 1892, Nu au chapeau de paille assis en bordure de mer combines several of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's favourite motifs: landscape, the sea and most importantly the young woman. Indeed, it is for his sensual, sensuous depictions of women that Renoir is best known. Here, the sitter is shown against the backdrop of a landscape which speaks of Renoir's status as one of the leading pioneers of Impressionism. Here, the subject is shown in a pose much favoured by Renoir, as is evidenced by its similarities to another of his paintings from the same year showing a young girl bathing, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. During this period, Renoir was famed both for his depictions of women and for his landscapes, and it is a telling indication of the equal status that each of these themes held for the artist himself that he travelled extensively during this period, not least to seaside towns, seeking inspirational vantage points that would result in vistas such as the one here.
In Nu au chapeau de paille assis en bordure de mer, the feathered brushstrokes which have become so iconic are in evidence, caressing the forms of the rocks in the background, the sea and the subject herself with equal delicacy and delight. Looking at this picture it is easy to see why, writing only two years after it was painted, Gustave Geffroy would exclaim that the scenes and beings in his works, 'are imbued by Renoir's poetry, a happy, impetuous, painter's poetry, which throbs and quivers and feeds on warmth and light' (Geffroy, quoted in N. Wadley (ed.), Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 188).