Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Private Collection, Europe

Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art & Kyoto, Kyoto Municipal Museum, Renoir, 1979, no. 15, illustrated

Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1918, vol. II,  illustrated p. 94

The canvas is lined. Apart from an intermittent line of retouching running along the top edge, the right edge, the upper half of the left edge, very small lines of retouching running intermittently along the lower edge and a nailhead-sized spot above the roadside towards the lower right edge, all visible under UV light, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate, although slightly warmer and deeper in the original.
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Though Renoir considered himself a figure and portrait painter above all, over one quarter of his works are landscape paintings. His landscapes, more than a detailed reproduction of a specific place, try and capture a sort of Arcadian timeless vision of nature. Winter scenes are extremely rare, and only four or so are known. As he told Vollard: "I could never deal with the cold..." (cited in Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883 (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery, London, 2007, p. 91).

This work was executed during the particularly cold and snowy winter of the year 1874 to 1875. Monet and Renoir's friendship had been getting stronger and stronger, and they had been working together to develop the Impressionist technique. Renoir particularly admired Monet's technique. "In April 1874, Renoir began to show a strong attachment to Monet and his pioneering passion for the landscape and, more generally, the plein air painting tradition - interests that Renoir would begin to explore as well through a series of portraits and landscapes which commemorated Monet and his family at Argenteuil. Monet exercised a crucial influence on the pictorial language of Renoir after 1873" (Colin B. Bailey in Renoir Landscapes, op. cit., p. 53). Renoir had spent the summer of 1874 at Monet's home in Argenteuil, and it is very possible that he had returned that winter to paint this landscape. It bears many similarities to the series of winter scenes Monet executed the same winter, and one can imagine they may have even worked side-by-side.

This frozen landscape continues to capture Renoir's Impressionist true spirit, notably in the range of colours used in the sky and snow. The grey winter sky and melting piles of snow, punctuated with swaths of yellow and blue, truly gives the impression of the heavy, cold light so common in winter. The thick application of paint and wide, rapid brushstrokes also make this an exemplary Impressionist painting from the height of the movement.