Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Galerie Hervé, Paris
Acquired from the above in 1965

Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, vol. I, Paris, 1918, no. 127, illustrated p. 32
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, 1911-1919 et 1er supplément, vol. V, Paris, 2014, no. 4040, illustrated p. 237

This work is in excellent condition. For the complete condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation please contact the Impressionist & Modern Art Department at +1 (212) 606 – 7360.
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At a young age Renoir apprenticed to the Lévy Brothers as a porcelain painter, copying works in the Louvre during his spare time before entering the studio of Charles Gleyre at the age of twenty. Flowers, musical instruments, animals and occasionally nudes were part of his porcelain repertoire, all of which were explored in full throughout his career. Étude de nus et de fleurs is a striking example not only of Renoir’s process but also of many of the primary themes of his oeuvre: the female nude, still life floral compositions and the bucolic landscape. In the present work numerous scenes are executed on the same canvas: exuberant bunches of pink and yellow roses, a landscape typical of those he executed in Cagnes in the South of France and two voluptuous nude bathers—one emerging from a river and the other, hat placed atop her head, drying herself in the sun. Renoir created many such canvases filled with diverse compositions and subjects. The majority of these were later cut into numerous individual works and sold separately from each other. Records of the original canvases exist in the published reproductions of glass negatives from Bernheim-Jeune and Vollard, but very few intact canvases are still found today.

Dating from the last decade of his life, when increasing physical handicaps and arthritis confined much of the artist’s movements, Renoir’s deft use and fluidity of the painted medium in the present work is remarkable. “Those who watched him paint in these years spoke of the forms emerging from the canvas as he worked, coming to life as he painted them… In his backgrounds, the space is rarely legible; trees, grasses and flowers fold themselves around the figures and complement their rhythms…. The colour scheme of these last paintings are very warm, dominantly pink and oranges; these hues are further emphasized by being set off against economically used zones of green and blue, whose coolness emphasizes the overall warmth” (John House in Renoir (exhibition catalogue), London, Hayward Gallery; Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais & Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1985-86, p. 278).