Lot 27
  • 27

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR | Après la tempête (temps d’orage)

Estimate
350,000 - 450,000 GBP
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • Après la tempête (temps d’orage)
  • signed A. Renoir (lower right)
  • oil on canvas
  • 46.8 by 56cm.
  • 18 3/8 by 22in.
  • Painted circa 1872.

Provenance

The artist (sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 24th March 1875, lot 34) The artist (purchased at the above sale)

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above circa 1875-77)

Confiscated from the above by the German government as enemy-alien property in August 1914 while on exhibition in Germany

Ida Bienert, Dresden (acquired by 1933)

Dr Fritz Nathan, Zurich

By descent from the above to the present owner

Exhibited

(possibly) Paris, Studios Nadar, 1875, no. 34 Bremen, Kunsthalle, Internationale Ausstellung, 1914, no. 287

Dresden, Galerie Arnold, Ausstellung Französischer Malerei des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 1914, no. 100

Paris, Galerie Max Kaganovitch, Œuvres choisies du XIXe siècle, 1950

Tübingen, Kunsthalle, Renoir, 1996, no. 20, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Literature

Will Grohmann, Die Sammlung Ida Bienert, Dresden, Potsdam, 1933, no. 3, illustrated p. 27 Michel Drucker, Renoir, Paris, 1955, illustrated in colour pl. 34

Elda Fezzi, L'opera completa di Renoir nel periodo impressionista 1869-1883, Milan, 1972, no. 144, illustrated p. 95 (as dating from 1874 and with incorrect dimensions)

Elda Fezzi, Tout l'œuvre peint de Renoir, période Impressionniste 1869-1883, Paris, 1985, no. 139, illustrated p. 95 (with incorrect dimensions)

Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir. Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, Paris, 2007, vol. I, no. 174, illustrated p. 227

Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883 (exhibition catalogue), The National Gallery, London; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa & Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2007-08, illustrated in colour p. 116

Catalogue Note

Painted around 1872, Après la tempête (temps d’orage) is a rare and particularly striking example of Renoir’s early work. As with many of Renoir’s landscapes from this period, he eschews the traditions of the genre – there are no figures or landmarks to anchor the composition, there is no historical or symbolic element, the precise location is unknown. Instead his focus is purely on capturing this moment – after the storm – and rendering the effects of weather, light and atmosphere on the landscape before him. The clouds are detailed in broad, emphatic brushstrokes with thickly impastoed whites and swathes of brightest blue indicating an invisible sun prevailing as the storm clears. In the foreground the trees and bushes are deftly evoked with daubs of dark green, and flowers with darts of red and pink. The vegetation is deliberately out of focus, with colours merging into one another; the wind runs through every brushstroke. It is a tour de force of painting en plein air and exemplifies the radical and innovative spirit that would drive Renoir – among others – to plan the First Impressionist Exhibition only a few years later. Après la tempête (temps d’orage) closely relates to Le coup de vent now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (fig. 1). Both works were included in the group of ten paintings that Renoir offered for sale in an auction at the Hôtel Drouot in March 1875. As Colin B. Bailey notes when discussing the works: ‘Renoir himself bought back After the Storm, a slightly smaller landscape of similar bravura, which he had put up for sale as ‘Temps d’orage’. These two works surely date from the same moment, and may even be of the same site’ (C.B. Bailey in Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883, op. cit., p. 116).



This work will be included in the forthcoming Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by The Wildenstein Plattner Institute.