Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Galeria Maison Bernard, Caracas
Ruth and Mauricio Kramer (sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 16, 1989, lot 327)
Private Collection
Galerie Boulakia, Paris
Acquired from the above on September 16, 2003

Ambroise Vollard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paintings, Pastels and Drawings, San Francisco, 1989, no. 616, illustrated p. 156

Very good condition. Canvas is lined. Surface is slightly dirty. Under UV light, no apparent inpainting.
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In Panneau de fruits et fleurs, Renoir replicates the pure luxuriance of a fruit and floral arrangement.  There is careful attention to light and shadow and the composition exemplifies the Impressionist techniques that Renoir and his colleague, Claude Monet, introduced at Impressionist group exhibitions in Paris. The present work is a wonderful demonstration of his key style applied to a floral and fruit motif.  As was the case for many of the Impressionist painters, Renoir did not need to rely on the trompe l'oeil techniques that had been utilized by artists for centuries in order to render this panel so convincingly. Instead, he drew upon his own creative ingenuity and his initial impressions of the image, rendering it with extraordinary freshness.

As was noted at the time of a retrospective exhibition in 1988, still-lifes were a reoccurring subject throughout Renoir's oeuvre, "For an artist enamoured with color, flowers provide a perfect subject -- infinitely varied, malleable to any arrangement. Several of Renoir's most beautiful paintings... are flower pieces. Renoir painted many pictures of flowers in addition to the more numerous figures and landscapes. Flowers appear frequently in his paintings as hat decorations or as part of the landscape behind figures even when they are not the main motif. Renoir himself said that when painting flowers he was able to paint more freely and boldly, without the mental effort he made with a model before him. Also, he found the painting of flowers to be helpful in painting human figures" (Renoir Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Nagoya City Art Museum, 1988, p. 247).

Executed in 1915, this work was originally part of a large painted border which Renoir had intended to use as a decorative frame for his Portrait of Madame de Galea (1915) (Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, vol. I, Paris, 1918, no. 616, illustrated, p. 156, Private collection, France).