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Lot Essay
Renoir's Les grandes baigneuses, completed in 1887 (Daulte, no. 514; coll. The Philadelphia Museum of Art) was a landmark painting by the artist at mid-career. Henceforth the nude, a subject that had previously only occasionally attracted his attention, became a central theme in his work. In the course of executing this work he worked through a major stylistic crisis. Having become disenchanted with Impressionist technique he turned toward the classicism of Ingres and Raphael, having especially admired paintings by the latter in a trip to Italy in 1881-1882. He made numerous studies for Les grandes baigneuses; it was the first time he undertook a major composition that required many months of deliberate and methodical preparation. Renoir put great care into perfecting the contours of the figures, and these drawings have a rigorous linear aspect that is elegant and beautiful, but ultimately lack the freshness and spontaneity that characterized his previous work.
When Renoir showed Les grandes baigneuses at Galeries Georges Petit in 1887, a few of the artist's friends applauded, but the most vocal element was hostile to his change in direction. The critic George Moore complained that in "two years [Renoir] had utterly destroyed every trace of the charming and delightful art which had taken him twenty years to build up" (quoted in J. Rewald, Renoir Drawings, New York, 1946, pp. 12-13). The painting failed to sell, and Renoir grew depressed at having apparently wasted almost three year's effort. He realized that his spontaneity was a virtue and not a limitation. Over the course of the next few years he abandoned his emphasis on contour and sought a synthesis of line and color, as Delacroix had done. He nevertheless retained a classical bias, which he expressed in his treatment of volume. His nudes became softer, more rounded and voluptuous, in the manner of Rubens and Titian.
The present drawing, done around the turn of the century, displays the mature and personal qualities in Renoir's draughtsmanship during his late career. Renoir now understood drawing not as an occasional or preparatory activity, but as a process complete in itself. In order to fashion line with color he revived the use of sanguine, the red chalk that Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard had favored in the previous century. In the present drawing he uses brown sepia chalk as well to model the contours of the figure; the use of the multiple tones, heightened with white, creates a shimmery effect. Renoir retains his pentimenti--the model's right arm was at first raised higher than in the finished drawing--and uses the shadowy forms to suggest depth and volume. Many of the artist's lines are long, continuous and flowing, uniting form with gesture in a naturally spontaneous expression.
Thus the human bodies, which he conceived as sensuous and generous, overflow their outlines and radiate into space. Line is no longer a limit which separates an object from its surroundings, it is, in the contrary, the medium that unites them. If it sets off a voluminous form against its background, it also creates between background and form that suggestion of space which gives the body it expansive roundness, its plenitude. (J. Rewald, op. cit., p. 14)
When Renoir showed Les grandes baigneuses at Galeries Georges Petit in 1887, a few of the artist's friends applauded, but the most vocal element was hostile to his change in direction. The critic George Moore complained that in "two years [Renoir] had utterly destroyed every trace of the charming and delightful art which had taken him twenty years to build up" (quoted in J. Rewald, Renoir Drawings, New York, 1946, pp. 12-13). The painting failed to sell, and Renoir grew depressed at having apparently wasted almost three year's effort. He realized that his spontaneity was a virtue and not a limitation. Over the course of the next few years he abandoned his emphasis on contour and sought a synthesis of line and color, as Delacroix had done. He nevertheless retained a classical bias, which he expressed in his treatment of volume. His nudes became softer, more rounded and voluptuous, in the manner of Rubens and Titian.
The present drawing, done around the turn of the century, displays the mature and personal qualities in Renoir's draughtsmanship during his late career. Renoir now understood drawing not as an occasional or preparatory activity, but as a process complete in itself. In order to fashion line with color he revived the use of sanguine, the red chalk that Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard had favored in the previous century. In the present drawing he uses brown sepia chalk as well to model the contours of the figure; the use of the multiple tones, heightened with white, creates a shimmery effect. Renoir retains his pentimenti--the model's right arm was at first raised higher than in the finished drawing--and uses the shadowy forms to suggest depth and volume. Many of the artist's lines are long, continuous and flowing, uniting form with gesture in a naturally spontaneous expression.
Thus the human bodies, which he conceived as sensuous and generous, overflow their outlines and radiate into space. Line is no longer a limit which separates an object from its surroundings, it is, in the contrary, the medium that unites them. If it sets off a voluminous form against its background, it also creates between background and form that suggestion of space which gives the body it expansive roundness, its plenitude. (J. Rewald, op. cit., p. 14)