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Lot 44 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Fillette à l'orange
Closed9 February 2011
Price Realised
GBP 825,250
More Information
Specialist note
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Renoir catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute and established from the archive funds of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.
Pictures of girls were a recurring feature in Renoir's work, often representing the children of his friends, relations and patrons, yet also serving as celebrations of youth and of femininity. Fillette à l'orange perfectly shows the artist's incredible ability to take a picture format which recalled the genre works, so beloved of the Salon against which the Impressionists had rebelled in the 1870s, and to imbue it with a fresh sense of spontaneity and of character. This becomes an intriguing study of the girl, who is given a strong sense of individuality by the artist's tender treatment. Her likeness is all the more vivid because of Renoir's concentration on her face and expression. The flesh tones of her face glow, lighter than the surrounding area, adding to the warmth of the composition.
Fillette à l'orange reveals Renoir's influential ability to tease his motif from the swirling field of colour with which he would often cover his canvas when he began a work. As his son, the film director Jean Renoir, explained in his memoir of his father, in these pictures, 'the motif gradually emerged from the seeming confusion, with each brushstroke, as though on a photographic plate' (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, London, 1962, p. 343). From the oils of the surface, Renoir would build up the image, which here also features the distinctive feathered brushwork that is such a hallmark of his work. The way in which the colours of the background, the chair and the girl's outfit complement each other reveals the totality of composition that was another distinctive factor in Renoir's work and which would have such an influence on artists as varied as Henri Matisse and Howard Hodgkin.
Pictures of girls were a recurring feature in Renoir's work, often representing the children of his friends, relations and patrons, yet also serving as celebrations of youth and of femininity. Fillette à l'orange perfectly shows the artist's incredible ability to take a picture format which recalled the genre works, so beloved of the Salon against which the Impressionists had rebelled in the 1870s, and to imbue it with a fresh sense of spontaneity and of character. This becomes an intriguing study of the girl, who is given a strong sense of individuality by the artist's tender treatment. Her likeness is all the more vivid because of Renoir's concentration on her face and expression. The flesh tones of her face glow, lighter than the surrounding area, adding to the warmth of the composition.
Fillette à l'orange reveals Renoir's influential ability to tease his motif from the swirling field of colour with which he would often cover his canvas when he began a work. As his son, the film director Jean Renoir, explained in his memoir of his father, in these pictures, 'the motif gradually emerged from the seeming confusion, with each brushstroke, as though on a photographic plate' (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, London, 1962, p. 343). From the oils of the surface, Renoir would build up the image, which here also features the distinctive feathered brushwork that is such a hallmark of his work. The way in which the colours of the background, the chair and the girl's outfit complement each other reveals the totality of composition that was another distinctive factor in Renoir's work and which would have such an influence on artists as varied as Henri Matisse and Howard Hodgkin.