Pierre-Auguste RENOIR (1841 - 1919)

Lot 22
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Estimation :
40000 - 60000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 106 600EUR
Pierre-Auguste RENOIR (1841 - 1919)
Étude de personnages Oil on canvas Signed lower left Oil on canvas, signed lower left 32,3 x 14,5 cm - 12 3/4 x 5 3/4 in. A notice of inclusion in the critical catalog of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, drawn up on March 20, 2012 by the Wildenstein Institute from the François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein archives, will be given to the buyer. PROVENANCE - Private collection, Europe - Sale, Impressionist and Modern Paintings - Watercolours and Sculpture, Christie's, London, 3 December 1996, lot 110 - Private collection (acquired in previous sale) - Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art, Day Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 3 May 2012, lot 360 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambroise Vollard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paintings, Pastels and Drawings, San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1989, referenced as #1571 and reproduced on p. 326 "During the last ten years of his life, Renoir worked with increasing pain from his arthritis. Practically immobilized, he felt more and more cut off from the surrounding world. His first two sons were wounded in the first months of the war, and Aline [Charigot, model and later wife of the painter] died in 1915. After her death, Renoir and Jean, his second son, began to explore together the life and world of the painter, which the latter reconstructed in his book Pierre-Auguste Renoir, mon père. However, Renoir remained in complete control of the mechanics of painting until his death. He recognized that he could now "only paint in width", but like Monet in his last paintings, he was able to work despite his physical limitations by combining width with extreme delicacy of effect. [...] The colors of these last canvases are very warm, predominantly pink and orange; moreover, these colors are accentuated by their contrast with sparingly used areas of green and blue, whose coolness emphasizes the warmth of the whole. These color combinations were in part a practical expedient: throughout his career, Renoir had been concerned about the durability of his pigments, but he felt that even his recent works were becoming duller; for example, he told Gimpel in 1918 that "he paints in brick color so that later his colors will become milky pink." [...] The nude was his main subject, but he continued to paint portraits and pictures with figures in costume. He increasingly monumentalized the models in his portraits; the costumes of the figures were not images of contemporary fashionable clothing, but rather a lavish display of colorful frills. During these later years, he also continued to produce countless small, unassuming oil studies when he felt tired, or restless, or unable to concentrate on more important things; but after he resigned himself to walking no more, he was able to concentrate what strength he had left on his painting, producing works of a scale and ambition that were a denial of his physical condition." "1910 - 1919," in Renoir, cat. expo, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, May 14-September 2, 1985, Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1985, pp. 326 - 329
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