Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ambroise Vollard, Paris (acquired from the artist)
Private Collection, Europe

Tokyo, Osaka & Nagoya, Nichido Galleries, La Gloire de l'Art Français, 1972, no. 48
Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art & Kyoto, Municipal Museum, Renoir, 1979, no. 38

Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, vol. II, Paris, 1918, illustrated p. 180

Canvas is lined. Minor frame abrasion visible around extreme edges. Under UV light: a few strokes of inpainting along right and left edges to address prior frame abrasion, as well as a few small spots around the upper right corner. Otherwise fine, work is in very good condition.
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During the 1880s Renoir increasingly strayed from the established techniques of Impressionist painting. He felt that the spontaneous application of pigment, without the aid of preparatory sketches or premeditated composition, led to work which lacked the monumentality and permanence which marked truly great art. In the later years of that decade he sought to re-align draughtsmanship with painting and underpin the rendering of a specific view under fleeting conditions of light with a well-controlled composition of receding perspective and balanced forms.

Renoir was determined to create paintings which would rival those of the old masters. Though he frequently scraped down his canvases in frustration, his confidence never waivered, as evidenced in a letter to Bérard on October 18, 1886: "I believe I am going to beat Raphael, and that people in the year 1887 are going to be amazed" (quoted in Barbara E. White, Renoir: His Life, Art and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 166).

Renoir worked with Paul Cézanne at La Roche-Guyon in 1885 so it is hardly surprising that the handling of the present work is indebted to Cézanne's "constructive stroke" (see fig. 1). Unlike Cézanne, however, Renoir does not completely subordinate the natural view to a two-dimensional patterning of brushtrokes; rather, he varies his brushwork and application of paint. The permanence of the present landscape is complemented by the more flickering presence of the magnificent tree at left, rendered with the mastery he so admired in his forebears.