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Lot 418 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Jacques-Eugène Spuller
Closed22 June 2011
Price Realised
GBP 421,250
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.
Between 1876 and 1879, the patronage of Georges and Marguerite Charpentier was crucial in establishing Renoir's artistic and commercial success as a portraitist. Madame Charpentier hosted a celebrated salon in the rue de Grenelle, to which Renoir was a welcome and frequent guest, and where he secured some of his most successful portrait commissions, including the present portrait of Jacques-Eugène Spuller. Spuller was a close friend of Léon Gambetta and had collaborated with him in founding the Revue politique in 1868, before acting as his lieutenant during the siege of Paris in 1870. During the 1870s he was the editor of the République française, one of the most influential newspapers in France. He would later take up the post of minister of foreign affairs during Gambetta's ministry 1881-1882, and in 1884, represented the French Cabinet in the formal presentation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
It is a tribute to the importance of this early portrait that it was one of five paintings lent by Georges Charpentier to the third Impressionist exhibition of April 1877, along with portraits of Jeanne Samary, Mme Alphonse Daudet, and Mme Charpentier herself, the first of which is presently in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, and the latter two which are in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (Dauberville nos. 462, 431 & 465). Painted and exhibited at the very beginning of the Impressionism, critics at the time were puzzled by the light and lively brushwork that define the movement, noting that 'The drawing of the features in the portrait of our friend Spuller lacks solidity'; however they approved of the way 'his expression is intense, the eyes think, the flesh is alive' (P. Burty, op. cit, p. 1).
Between 1876 and 1879, the patronage of Georges and Marguerite Charpentier was crucial in establishing Renoir's artistic and commercial success as a portraitist. Madame Charpentier hosted a celebrated salon in the rue de Grenelle, to which Renoir was a welcome and frequent guest, and where he secured some of his most successful portrait commissions, including the present portrait of Jacques-Eugène Spuller. Spuller was a close friend of Léon Gambetta and had collaborated with him in founding the Revue politique in 1868, before acting as his lieutenant during the siege of Paris in 1870. During the 1870s he was the editor of the République française, one of the most influential newspapers in France. He would later take up the post of minister of foreign affairs during Gambetta's ministry 1881-1882, and in 1884, represented the French Cabinet in the formal presentation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
It is a tribute to the importance of this early portrait that it was one of five paintings lent by Georges Charpentier to the third Impressionist exhibition of April 1877, along with portraits of Jeanne Samary, Mme Alphonse Daudet, and Mme Charpentier herself, the first of which is presently in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, and the latter two which are in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (Dauberville nos. 462, 431 & 465). Painted and exhibited at the very beginning of the Impressionism, critics at the time were puzzled by the light and lively brushwork that define the movement, noting that 'The drawing of the features in the portrait of our friend Spuller lacks solidity'; however they approved of the way 'his expression is intense, the eyes think, the flesh is alive' (P. Burty, op. cit, p. 1).