Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ambroise Vollard, Paris

Schwob d'Hericourt, Paris

Wildenstein, New York (1974)

Helen Turner Fine Art, New York

Wildenstein Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above

New York, Wildenstein, The Object as Subject, 1975, no. 63

The canvas has been lined. Under UV, there is old retouching along the edges to address frame abrasion, as well as some newer specks of retouching in the green background, particularly surrounding the tulip extending out of the bouquet on the upper left, and a small touch in the pink/white peony at the bottom left. These retouchings are not visible in natural light, and the work is otherwise in very good condition.
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Renoir’s exquisite depiction of a lush bouquet of peonies in a vase illustrates the development of his style during the pivotal formative years of the Impressionist movement.  Although Renoir painted this work in a staged environment, it is invigorated by spontaneity of execution and a sense of freedom of his brushstrokes.  The composition is animated by vibrant colors and a sense of depth achieved by contrasting light and shadow.  Renoir did not depict the background of this composition in great detail, focusing instead on the interplay of the bright red, yellow and white tones of the flowers as well as on the texture of the vase.

It is not surprising that a floral still-life, especially one as lush and abundant as the present work, would have appealed to Renoir.  He had begun his career painting flowers on porcelain for the Sèvres workshop, and his progression with the subject evolved into rich depictions of floral arrangements on canvas by the late 1860s.  As was noted at the time of a retrospective exhibition in 1988, ‘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 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).