Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(possibly) Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Private Collection (acquired circa 1960)

Ambroise Vollard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Tableaux, pastels et dessins, vol. I, Paris, 1918, no. 59, illustrated p. 15
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, vol. II, Paris, 2009, no. 1340, illustrated p. 408

The canvas is not lined. There is evidence of some minor surface abrasion along the extreme edges which is not visible when framed. There is an artist's pinhole in each corner. Very minor shrinkage visible in thickest areas of impasto. Under UV light: there is an uneven layer of varnish which is difficult to read through but no inpainting is apparent.
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This sensuous study for a nude was completed about a year after Renoir’s momentous trip to Italy in 1881, where he encountered the boundless achievements of the Old Masters. Following his homecoming, Renoir’s work began to show an increased emphasis on more traditional disciplines, concentrating on volumetric figures and softly contoured forms, eventually culminating in the Arcadian Les Grandes Baigneuses of 1884-87. In this earlier study, a sumptuous nude reclines like one of Titian’s Venuses or Ingres’ Odalisques. Renoir’s sensitive handling of the mass of her voluptuous body can be seen as an attempt to fuse his interest in traditional beauty with his radical approach to color and form. Renoir, whose earlier Impressionist works are characterized by their mastery of the plasticity of light, here applies the same principles whilst referencing the monumental, sculptural and sensuous feminine forms painted by those forebears he so admired. Speaking on the influence of Ingres on Renoir at this time, Keith Wheldon finds that “[Renoir] used the principles he found in the master’s works as guides to the perfection of his own ideal of figure painting” (Keith Wheldon, Renoir and his Art, New York, 1975, p. 92), creating a kind of beauty that could answer both to the authority of the past and the radical demands of the modern.