Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Durand-Ruel, Paris & New York (acquired from the artist in November 1902)
Private Collection, Switzerland
Gallery Yayoi, Tokyo
Galerie Tamenaga, Tokyo 
Acquired from the above in 2002

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Natures mortes, 1908, no. 25
London, The Lefevre Gallery, XIX and XX Century French Painting, 1971, no. 19
Tokyo, Isetan Museum & Kyoto, Kyoto City Museum, Renoir, 1979, no. 63bis

Michel Florisoone, Renoir, Paris, 1937, illustrated p. 156
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, vol. III, Paris, 2010, no. 1718, illustrated p. 36

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is lined and quite recently re-stretched. The surface is clean and well preserved. There is some old frame abrasion along the extreme edges with associated tiny spots of paint loss (not visible when framed). A few tiny lines of craquelure visible in the green pigment of the pineapple top. Under UV light: there is a thin varnish which impedes thorough examination but some faint fluorescence along the lower edge and in one 1/2 inch-squared spot in background to upper right of fruits indicate some minor retouching.
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.
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From the 1880s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir deliberately set about attempting to "re-learn" how to paint. He considered his earlier techniques too imprecise—his compositions too lacking in form. It is at this point in Renoir’s artistic career that still lifes become predominant in his oeuvre. He looked to the precedent set by the Old Masters, dwelling on their methods of reconciling line, form and color. Fraises et ananas is a particularly beautiful example of this development in Renoir’s later works, evoking the stillness and balance achieved during the Golden Age of Dutch paintings. The strawberries are modeled with great delicacy and precision, while the fresh color scheme of red and orange set against the crisp white cloth further articulates the strong lines of the fruits, accomplishing rigor and solidity.

Renoir’s concern to re-educate himself as an artist was one manifestation of a greater swell of anxiety that he battled throughout his career. Ambroise Vollard records a letter Renoir once wrote to him in which he claimed despondently that he had “wrung Impressionism dry” and concluded that he knew “neither how to paint nor how to draw” (Ambroise Vollard, Harold L. Van Doren & Randolph T. Weaver, Renoir: An Intimate Record, New York, 1925, p. 56). While his sketches and smaller compositions were an effective vehicle for focusing his skills, they were also, as Alexandre recognized, a means of escaping the weighty pressure that a larger and more sustained work would bear on him (Arsène Alexandre, "Renoir sans phrases" in Les Arts, March 1920, p. 9). His final utterance, on laying down his paint brushes for the last time was reputedly: “I think I’m beginning to understand something about it…” (quoted in Jean Renoir, Renoir, Paris, 1962, p. 457).

Despite the artist’s proclivities toward despair, Fraises et Ananas attests to moments of brilliant clarity. The present painting is highly worked and deftly handled and speaks of the pure contentment the artist was capable of deriving from painting. A few years after the present work was painted, he wrote to his friend Albert André: “Blessed painting, very late in life you still give illusions and sometimes joy” (January 12, 1910, MS, Institute Néerlandais, Fondation Custodia, Paris). Fraises and ananas perfectly captures this mood of joy in its gentle grace, distinction and allure.