PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR | La Liseuse

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris

Dr. Emil Hahnloser, Zurich (acquired from the above on November 6, 1916)

Thence by descent

Winterthur, Kunstmuseum, Austellung Französische Malerei, 1916, no. 134 (titled Liseuse à la chaise cannée)

Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold, La Collection Arthur et Hedy Hahnloser. Un regard partagé avec les artistes, Lausanne, 2011, illustrated in color p. 33

Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, vol. IV, Paris, 2012, no. 3276, illustrated pl. 28 & p. 352

Luminously and fluidly rendered, this peaceful portrayal of a girl reading encapsulates the artist’s prime artistic penchants for beauty, youth and leisure. Painted in 1904, La Liseuse arose from a time of deep personal crisis for Renoir—his physical torment belied by the radiance and placidity of his works. The artist, aged 63, was increasingly plagued by rheumatoid arthritis, with bouts of paralysis leading to moments of despair. Fearing the end of his career, Renoir wrote to dealer Durand-Ruel in September: “I can hardly move and I really think things are all botched up for painting. I won’t be able to do anything any more. You must understand that under these circumstances, nothing interests me” (Correspondance de Renoir et Durand-Ruel, vol. I, Lausanne, 1995, p. 237). Though his arthritis would continue to worsen and necessitate the assistance of a large staff until his death, the worries conveyed in Renoir’s letter proved unfounded, as the artist regained his morale and channeled his remaining energy into painting. By the turn of the century Renoir had already achieved acclaim for his portraiture and had secured a comfortable bourgeois standard of living for his wife and children. The budding century also brought with it a new and final child for the Renoirs, a baby boy named Claude who would prove to be one of the artist’s greatest young muses. During this period, the ailing yet peripatetic Renoir vacillated between Paris and Essoyes, the hometown of his wife Aline, and spent frequent weeks away from his family as he convalesced in the east and south of France. As such travel and bouts of illness afforded Renoir fewer opportunities to hire professional models, his work from this time reflects subjects either known to him—like his sons and long-time maid and model Gabrielle Renard—or those amalgamated from the artist’s idealized notions of female beauty. While the dark-haired Gabrielle dominates his domestic scenes throughout the course of his career, it is thought that the sitter in La Liseuse may refer to another nanny and nursemaid employed by the Renoir family at this time, Renée Jolivet. The young daughter of a midwife, Jolivet joined the household after the birth of Claude in 1901 (see fig. 1), and despite her short stay of three years, was remembered by Jean Renoir as “the most memorable of his father’s housemaids/models after Gabrielle, Georgette Pigeot, and La Boulangère” (C. Bailey, Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age, New Haven & London, 1997, p. 236).

Whether employing professional models or rendering his friends and family, Renoir consistently favored domestic scenes, blurring the line between the academic disciplines of portraiture and genre painting. “Just as genre painting was drifting toward stale and hollow parody in the nineteenth century, the Impressionists rejuvenated the tradition through a fresh observation of the everyday world around them. In scenes of modern life in the home, in cafés, theaters, racetracks, the street and the dance hall they discovered a compelling immediacy and emotional complexity... Renoir was particularly adept at achieving vitality in paintings of everyday life by rooting his subjects in actual situations, defined settings, and the actions and routine of known individuals, all of which carried meaning for the contemporary viewer” (A. Dumas & J. Collins, Renoir’s Women, 2005, London & New York, p. 88).

By the 1890s, Renoir had also developed a deep reverence for the work of Vermeer as one of the greatest masters of the genre scene, and often traveled to the Louvre to study The Lacemaker, keenly aware of the Dutch painter’s astute psychological insight into quotidian ritual. “In Vermeer’s novel treatment of natural light, spontaneous representation of everyday life, and sensitivity to male and female spheres of experience, Renoir discovered a confirmation of his own Impressionist enterprise” (ibid., p. 99). Vermeer’s works like The Lacemaker and Woman Reading a Letter (see fig. 2), speak to Renoir’s careful study of light and pleasant depictions of traditionally gendered activities.

In the twentieth century, Renoir’s attention and painterly affection shifted to another Northern master—Peter Paul Rubens. La Liseuse’s swirling brushwork, thinly applied pigment, diaphanous fabric and gentle flushes of peach and pink recall much of the work of the Flemish artist and reveal the deep influence the seventeenth-century painter had on Renoir, especially in his later years (see figs. 3 & 4). Diary entries from early 1903 of art critic and friend of Renoir Téodor de Wyzewa reflect the artist’s revived fascination: “[Renoir] told me about the genius of Rubens, of the tremors of delight that one experiences in front of his painting,” and praise Renoir’s own unique virtuosity: “I went to the home of my dear Renoir, whom I found preoccupied with the start of a large figure. I often think that is a solemn and mysterious thing for me, the fact that I am endlessly in contact with the only man of genius of my time. Each touch of the brush from this man creates for us the impression of a miracle. And it truly is a miracle to witness how with his poor deformed hands, he can transform into color, light and beauty the miserable objects he has chosen as models” (quoted in N. Wadley, Renoir: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 234).



This work will be included in the forthcoming Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.