Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Durand-Ruel, Paris
Dr. Alfred Gold, Berlin (acquired by 1929)
Mayor Gallery, London (acquired by 1953)
Private Collection (and sold: Sotheby's, London, July 6, 1960, lot 137)
Eric Estorick, London
Sale: Sotheby's London, June 26, 1990, lot 28
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired from the above in 1993

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy & London, Tate Gallery, Renoir, 1953, no. 36

Julius Meier-Graefe, Renoir, Leipzig, 1929, no. 357, illustrated p. 344
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, vol. IV, Paris, 2012, no. 3144, illustrated p. 274

This work seems to be in very fresh and good condition. The canvas has been lined, probably in France, with a non-acidic glue as an adhesive. The paint layer is cleaned and lightly varnished. There are a few tiny retouches along the extreme top edge, in the upper right corner and in the lower right corner. There do not appear to be any further retouches throughout the remainder of the picture. The above condition report has been prepared by Simon Parkes, an independent conservator who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In this alluring image of two country women and a dog in a meadow, Renoir creates the rêve de bonheur typical of his early twentieth-century works, where pink-cheeked, rustic women idle in a bucolic paradise of lush grass and wild flowers. Renoir, choosing not to paint a horizon, plunges his provincial figures into the abundant meadow where they sit, quiet and inactive. Dressed in rust, pink and ochre and with full lips and flushed cheeks they become as much part of nature as the meadow itself with its own patches of chestnut scrub and rosy blooms. Renoir paints a scene of rustic bliss and the insistent abundance of flowers and of flesh reveals the painter’s clear associations between rural life and femininity with health and happiness.

Indeed, throughout Renoir’s life, women “provided him with his most potent source of inspiration and are at the center of the idyllic, harmonious worlds he constructed” (Ann Dumas and John Collins, Renoir’s Women, New York, 2005, p. 88); and these plump and pleasant women are certainly no exception. Woman’s place in Renoir’s work was often in such genre paintings as Deux filles dans un pré, and it was around the time of this painting’s execution that Renoir was creating images of pearly-skinned Arcadian bathers (see fig. 1). Just as is the case in the offered work, where the two women exist in a world far away from that of toil and labor, Renoir uses femininity to suggest all the comforts and pleasures of a carefree life of friendship and intimacy.