Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Private Collection (sale: Sotheby's, London, 5th December 1962, lot 19)
Edgardo Acosta Gallery, Beverly Hills
Private Collection, Connecticut (acquired from the above by 1997)
Private Collection (by descent from the above; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 6th May 2009, lot 231)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1918, vol. II, n.n., illustrated p. 170
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, 1895-1902, Paris, 2010, no. 2253, illustrated p. 320

The canvas is lined and there are some faint scattered lines of retouching visible under UV light along all four edges relating to previous frame rubbing. This work is in overall good condition.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Renoir’s La guitariste is a wonderfully spontaneous and delicate rendering of one of the artist’s favourite subjects. It relates to a group of works that Renoir painted in the late 1890s of women and men playing the guitar. Although the model in the present work lacks the overtly Spanish costume seen in Jeune éspagnole jouant de la guitare of 1898 (the National Gallery of Art, Washington), the abundantly ruffled sleeves of her blouse and the two small flowers pinned in her hair give the impression that she is indeed wearing a costume of sorts. Renoir's appreciation for ‘La Belle Otéro’, a dancer at the Folies-Bergère who was celebrated at the time as the embodiment of Spanish seduction, is thought to have been a direct inspiration for these works but it is more likely that Renoir’s russet-haired model was a young girl named Germaine, who had also posed with a guitar in Renoir’s studio for Jeune espagnole jouant de la guitare as well as at least three other major paintings of the period. After a visit to his studio in 1897, Julie Manet was full of praise for Renoir's guitar players: ‘He is working on some delightful guitar studies: a woman in a white chiffon dress which is held in position with pink bows leaning gracefully over a big yellow guitar, with her feet on a yellow cushion, another canvas is of a man in Spanish costume who seems to be playing lively tunes on his instrument. The whole effect is colourful, mellow, delicious’ (quoted in A Very Private Collection: Janice H. Levin's Impressionist Pictures (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003, p. 87).

The 1890s was a time of great retrospection for Renoir and his choice of the theme of a figure playing a musical instrument is also a manifestation of his renewed interest in the grand tradition of French painting. Important precedents include Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s Le Guitariste (1755-1760, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes), Édouard Manet’s Le Chanteur Espagnol (1860, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and of course Camille Corot’s Femme à la Mandoline (1826-28, Private Collection). Renoir’s preference for portraying his sitter as apparently impervious to the presence of her viewing audience was shared by Berthe Morisot whose La Mandoline of 1889 (fig. 1) Renoir had singled out in 1896 whilst helping Julie Manet, then seventeen years old, to organise a retrospective of her mother's art at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris. On 4th March of that year, Julie recorded in her diary, 'M. Renoir is very fond of the painting La Mandoline, as well as the one next to it' (quoted in B.E. White, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 202).