Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Wally Findlay Galleries, Chicago
Ray A. and Joan B. Kroc (acquired from the above in 1972 and sold: Christie's, New York, May 3, 2006, lot 338)
Richard Green Fine Paintings, London
Acquired from the above in 2006

Very good condition. Original canvas. Under UV, few strokes of inpainting near the chin and left cheek of the figure facing us and a few strokes near lower right to cover frame abrasion.
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.
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Chapeau au ruban rouge exemplifies the warm palette and spontaneous brushwork that defined much of Renoir's mature work.  As the leading portraitist of the Impressionist painters, Renoir received a great number of commissions during the 1880s and 1890s which enabled him to develop the legendary style for which he is known. The models for these portraits were often his wife, Aline, and his children's nursemaid, Gabrielle Renard, but he would also paint other less recognizable members of his circle, often fashioning them with a prominent accessory.  In the present work, Renoir depicts one of his sitters wearing a hat that is enlivened with a bright red ribbon, while the sitter facing the viewer is visible tying a ribbon in her hair.  "When he paints a portrait," Edmond Renoir wrote of the artist, "he asks his model to behave normally, to sit as she usually sits, to dress as she usually dresses, so that nothing smacks of constraint or artificial preparation" (quoted in Colin B. Bailey, "Portrait of the Artist as a Portrait Painter," in Renoir's Portraits, Impressionist of an Age, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Art Institute of Chicago and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (exhibition catalogue), 1997, p. 20).

Colin B. Bailey has written about the history of Renoir's pictures of women, outlining the styles that governed many of these works throughout the artist's life, "Narrowly defined, portraiture occupied Renoir at all stages of his early and middle career--from the dour and respectable effigies of family members painted in the 1860s, often surprisingly Victorian in feeling, to the extravagantly brushed canvases of the Impressionist decade, to the more solidly modelled, but no less brightly colored, transitional works of the mid-1880s. During the last thirty years of his life, Renoir returned to the genre intermittently.  In old age, his forms become more ample and his colors more generalized, but the artist touches new depths of affection and tenderness, and is capable of unexpected humor and wit" (ibid., p.3).