Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre Renoir (the artist's son)
Galerie Flechtheim, Berlin and Düsseldorf
Gustav Knauer, Berlin
The Lefevre Gallery (Alex Reid & Lefevre), London
Aquavella Galleries, Inc., New York
Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and portraiture are synonymous.  Of all the Impressionist painters, only Renoir has the distinction of having been a professional portraitist.  Renoir's portraits were not limited to his bourgeois patrons.  On the contrary, the artist was keen to capture the likenesses of his fellow artists, bohemian friends, peasants and other "anonymous" sitters.  However, of all his subjects, Renoir delighted in depicting the female form; he stated that he had become an artist in order to paint women.  John House states, "It was by his representation of women that Renoir wanted his powers as a painter to be assessed.    In the early 1890s [Renoir] commented that 'in literature as in painting, talent is shown only by treatment of the feminine figures'" (John House, Renoir, (exhibition catalogue) New York, 1985, p. 16).

When writing about Renoir's drawing ability, John Rewalds states, "With his soft chalks Renoir crushed lines, blurred contours and modeled forms.  Occassionally he wiped a number of strokes into large areas.  Often several lines, repeating themselves in parallel, generate a vibrating form.  Thus the human bodies, which he conceived as sensuous and generous, overflow their outlines and radiate into space.  Line is no longer a limit which separates an object from its surroundings, it is, on the contrary, the medium that unites them.  If it sets off a volumious form against its background, it also creates between background and form that suggestion of space which gives the body its expansive roundness, its plenitude" (J. Rewald, Renoir Drawings, New York, 1946, p. 14). 

The present work is related to the final oil painting La lecture from 1888 (Fig. 1) as well as two smaller oil sketches (F. Daulte, Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1971, nos. 527 and 529)