With its warm light and loose brushstrokes, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Jeune femme assise, 1912–1914, exudes a soft glow and captures an intimate, introspective moment. Painted in the artist’s final decade, this portrait distills the stylistic experimentations that defined Renoir’s career, from his commitment to Impressionist motifs to the use of classic subjects inspired by Italian Renaissance painters like Raphael and Titian. While the present work sits within the genre for which Renoir became most well-known—portraiture—its connections to his own still lifes and landscapes serve as a culmination of an impressive and renowned oeuvre.
While the model’s face remains entirely legible, Renoir renders it with a softness resulting from a combination of the gentle lighting upon her skin, tendrils of loose hair, and her calm expression. Unlike portraits of known society figures such as Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children, 1878, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Femme en buste instead depicts a subject from domestic, modern life. After moving from urban Paris to the French countryside in 1907, Renoir’s subject matter transitioned from commissioned portraits of wealthy patrons and their families, such as the Charpentiers, towards more intimate studies of the female form, including models, local women, and close friends.
“I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it, if it is a landscape, or to stroke a breast or a back, if it is a figure.”
—Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Further shifting away from his earlier tendency for sharp figural outlines, in the present work, Renoir renders his sitter in painterly, airy brushstrokes barely distinguishable from the background. At lower right is the mere suggestion of the figure’s hands, standing out against the warm golden backdrop. In the background, there seems to be an amorphous armchair that blends into its surroundings. Around this time, the artist wrote that “at the moment, I am trying to merge the landscape with my figures,” and this portrait perfectly captures his success in this ambition.i Renoir’s painterly approach to this portrait mimics his still lifes. Upon close inspection, folds of the woman’s robe could just as easily depict the papery skin of an onion, and her rosy, pink lips appear almost like flower petals. These resemblances evidence his willingness to experiment with new techniques and subjects in his later years. As such, Jeune femme assise encapsulates Renoir’s transformative artistic journey in his final decade.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Onions, 1881, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. Image: Courtesy Clark Art Institute. clarkart.edu
i Pierre-Auguste Renoir, quoted in Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 42.
Provenance
B. Mayer, Zurich Galerie Thannhauser, Lucerne (acquired from the above on July 6, 1925) Robert W. Schütte, New York (acquired from the above on July 28, 1930) Florence S. Schütte, New York (by descent from the above in 1935) Estate of the above, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, January 5, 1946, lot 760 Isabelle M. Murphy (acquired at the above sale) Estate of Isabelle M. Murphy Sotheby's, New York, May 14, 1992, lot 242 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Jeremy Wiltshire Fine Art, London Acquired from the above by the present owner in November 2003
Exhibited
Berlin, Galerie Thannhauser, Erste Sonderausstellung in Berlin, January 9–February, 1927, no. 205, pp. 138–139 (illustrated, p. 139; titled Junges Mädchen)
Literature
Julius Meier-Graefe, Renoir, Leipzig, 1929, no. 312, p. 316 (illustrated; titled Sitzendes Mädchen; dated 1906) Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Renoir Catalogue Raisonné des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins et Aquarelles 1903–1910, vol. 4, Paris, 2012, no. 3269, p. 347 (illustrated)
Property from an Important Private American Collection
signed "Renoir" upper left oil on canvas 13 1/2 x 10 7/8 in. (34.3 x 27.6 cm) Painted in 1912–1914.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.