Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris
Private Collection, Switzerland
Sale: Galerie Motte, Geneva, 27th November 1965, lot 71
Purchased from the above by the late owner

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Renoir, An Exhibition of Paintings from European Collections in aid of the Renoir Foundation, 1956, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue

Paysage et rivière vue de Mourillon is a serene and evocative vision which embodies the fresh spontaneity of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s later plein-air painting. Painted in 1890, the present work depicts a lush landscape in the Southern Mediterranean with rich green foliage, feathery vibrant blue brushstrokes and a sailboat visible in the distance. Unlike his colleagues Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet who often depicted labourers in landscapes, Renoir preferred to focus on scenes of leisure. Discussing Renoir’s landscapes from this period and how they helped to shape the rest of his career, John House comments that Renoir’s paintings of the early 1890s were characterized by a ‘softer more supple handling … This harmonious interrelation of man and nature became a central theme in Renoir’s late work’ (Renoir (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris & Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1985-86, p. 262).

The late nineteenth century was a particularly prosperous time for Renoir, during which he began to achieve a degree of economic success. By this time, Renoir had become recognized as one of the foremost Impressionist painters and he received a significant degree of financial support from the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. This newfound financial freedom allowed him to paint en plein-air with greater frequency, finding that the freshness of natural light was much more desirable to studio work. Paysage et rivière vue de Mourillon is a vivid and bright composition created during this period of artistic growth. During this time, Renoir traveled to the south of France annually, motivated in part by his weakening health but also in search of fresh inspiration for new paintings. In a letter to Durand-Ruel, towards the end of one of his stays in the Mediterranean, Renoir comments on the glorious weather and his newfound delight in plein-air painting: ‘I am cramming myself with sunshine!’ He continued, ‘This landscape painter's craft is very difficult for me, but these three months will have taken me further than a year in the studio. Afterward I'll come back and be able to take advantage at home of my experiments’ (quoted in Barbara Ehrlich White, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 191).

The present work was acquired from Galerie Motte in 1965 by Annemarie Düringer and has remained in her family’s collection until the present day. A Swiss actress of extraordinary beauty, Düringer was a member of the prestigious Vienna Burgtheater where she was known for her portrayals as Queen Elisabeth in Schiller’s Maria Stuart.