Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Sam Salz, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above circa 1955)
Thence by descent

Canvas is lined. Surface is slightly dirty. Under UV light: a few tiny dots of inpainting around lower right corner. A few dots of pooled varnish around lower left edge of vase also fluoresce but are visible to naked eye. Otherwise fine, work is in very good condition.
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Roses blanches is a splendid demonstration of Renoir's Impressionist style applied to a floral motif.  What is particularly remarkable in this beautiful composition is the artist's ability to replicate the pure luxuriance of a floral arrangement.  As was the case for many of the Impressionist painters, Renoir did not need to rely on the trompe l'oeil techniques that had been utilized by artists for centuries in order to portray his still-life so convincingly.  Instead, he drew upon his own creative ingenuity and his initial impressions of the image, rendering it with extraordinary freshness.  As was noted at the time of a 1988 retrospective exhibition, "For an artist enamoured with color, flowers provide a perfect subject--infinitely varied, malleable to any arrangement.  Several of Renoir's most beautiful paintings... are flower pieces.  Renoir painted many pictures of flowers in addition to the more numerous figures and landscapes.  Flowers appear frequently in his paintings as hat decorations or as part of the landscape behind figures even when they are not the main motif.  Renoir himself said that when painting flowers he was able to paint more freely and boldly, without the mental effort he made with a model before him.  Also, he found the painting of flowers to be helpful in painting human figures" (Renoir Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Nagoya City Art Museum, 1988, p. 247).