PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR | Esquisse de fleurs

Estate of the Artist
Galerie Urban, Paris
Private Collection, South America (acquired from the above in 1963; sale: Christie's, New York, 5th May 2011, lot 305)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Bernheim-Jeune (ed.), L'Atelier de Renoir, Paris, 1931, no. 371, illustrated pl. 119
Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, 1911-1919, Paris, 2014, vol. V, no. 3594, illustrated p. 6

The canvas is not lined. Examination under UV light reveals a small area of retouching towards the centre of the canvas (approx. 2cm wide) and some further small spots and lines to the lower half of the canvas, predominantly to the background. There are fine lines of paint shrinkage and craquelure in places. This work is in overall good condition.
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Esquisse de fleurs is a splendid composition that exemplifies the artist's ability to replicate the richness of a floral arrangement. As was the case for many of the Impressionist painters, Renoir did not need to rely on the trompe l'oeil techniques that had been utilised by artists for centuries in order to render his still-life so convincingly. Instead, he drew upon his own creative ingenuity and his initial impressions of the image, rendering it with extraordinary freshness. Few artists of his generation would approach this subject with the luxuriousness and sensitivity that is demonstrated in his floral pictures. Renoir once said of his flower pictures, ‘What seems to me most significant about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story’ (quoted in Peter Mitchell, European Flower Painters, London, 1973, pp. 211-12).

As was noted at the time of a retrospective exhibition in 1988, still-lifes were a reoccurring subject throughout Renoir's œuvre, ‘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 hat 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). Ultimately, Esquisse de fleurs is an exquisite example of Renoir’s mature exposition of the subject.