PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

(1841-1919)

Paysage aux Collettes

Footnotes

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

Provenance
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist's estate after 1919).
Galerie Adolphe Basler, Paris.
Hammer Galleries, New York; their sale, Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, New York, 15 April 1959, lot 37.
Blanche Swift Morris Collection, Miami Beach; her sale, Sotheby's, New York, 23 February 1984, lot 3.
Galerie Klopfer, Zurich (1987).
Private collection, South Africa.
Private collection, Australia (acquired from the above circa 1998).

Exhibited
Coral Gables, University of Miami, Joe & Emily Lowe Art Gallery, 18th, 19th and 20th Century Paintings, July - September 1962.

Literature
J. & G. Bernheim-Jeune, Renoir's Atelier, San Francisco, 1989, no. 375 (illustrated pl. 121).
G-P. & M. Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, Vol. IV, 1903-1910, Paris, 2012, no. 2920 (illustrated p. 143; dated circa 1910).

Painted circa 1905-1910, Paysage aux Collettes is a wonderful example of Renoir's renewed enjoyment of the landscape oeuvre, inspired by fresh surroundings. Prompted to move from Paris to the Mediterranean coast upon the advice of his doctor, the artist bought the five-acre hilltop farm of Les Collettes in 1907, having travelled repeatedly to the area before. Renoir was so enamoured by the original building's rural charm that he left the old structures intact and instead had a new home constructed for his family. Les Collettes and the surrounding views over medieval Cagnes-sur-Mer would provide a new and endless source of inspiration for the artist who sought to capture the gnarled olive trees, sun-drenched meadows and white-washed buildings on intimate, smaller-scale canvases such as the present work.

In Paysage aux Collettes we see the characteristic rounded olive trees of Renoir's garden, their foliage realised with verdant greens and burnt yellows, the shadows formed in deep blues and russet tones. Punctuating the landscape are the billowing sheets of white linen hung out to dry, the evocation of a breeze created by fluid and loose brushstrokes.

Continually seeking to capture the fleeting effects of nature, Renoir built a glass structure in the olive grove to serve as an outdoor studio to allow him to continue painting en plein air. His new focus on the surrounding landscape led him to comment in a 1918 interview with the art critic René Gimpel, 'The olive tree, what a brute! If you realise how much trouble it has caused me. A tree full of colours. Not great at all. Its little leaves, how they've made me sweat! A gust of wind, and my tree's tonality changes. The colours isn't on the leaves, but in the spaces between them. I know that I can't paint nature, but I enjoy struggling with it. A painter can't be great if he doesn't understand landscape' (Renoir quoted in J. House, Renoir, exh. cat., London, 1985, p. 277).

The dancing arabesque shapes formed by trees in the present work are emphasised by their modelling in soft curlicue brushstrokes which appear to sway beneath our gaze. This movement is echoed in the sun-dappled grass and linen which blows in the summer breeze. Renoir's preference for fluid brushwork and layers of transparent colours may in part show the influence of his early training as a porcelain painter from 1854 to 1858.

The strong Mediterranean sunlight encouraged Renoir to brighten his already vivid palette and led to an increasing use of red in all its nuances to capture the ruddy Provencal earth. Flecks of red appear throughout the trees and foreground, leading our eye around the work, while the piercing blue of the sky is echoed in the cool shadows in the laundry and grass below. Renoir's landscapes from this period were also typically painted on a smaller scale, but despite their intimate size are full works, densely painted and highly coloured, illustrating his belief that a painting should be attractive to look at, bringing pleasure to both the artist and the viewer. He told the younger artist Albert André, 'I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it, if it is a landscape' (Renoir quoted in ibid, p. 14).

In this aspect, Renoir stood aside from his Impressionist contemporaries who painted the modern world as they saw it, unembellished and un-idealised. Renoir's oeuvre maintained a distance from artistic doctrine, politics or the developments in photography and cinema which influenced so many others. His timeless compositions offered a refuge from the contemporary world and by the time the present work was painted, Renoir was increasingly looking back to eighteenth century classicism. Upon settling on the shores of the Mediterranean he rediscovered his love of classical antiquity, as well as his early interest in artists such as Watteau, Fragonard and Delacroix, whose works he had studied at the Louvre as a young student. Renoir found similarities in his idyllic surroundings with Watteau's landscapes in particular and referenced the tradition of French landscape painting through the use of trees as framing devices and a suffusion of light.

Despite suffering from arthritis and being confined to a wheelchair in his later years, Renoir continued to paint every day apart from Sundays. Indeed Matisse, a visitor to the house in 1917, was astonished to see Renoir's mature work and declared these extemporaneous landscapes which celebrate the beauty of the warm Mediterranean coast, to be 'all his best work' (Matisse quoted in F. Harris, Contemporary Portraits, Fourth Series, New York, 1923, p. 125).

Housed in a private Australian collection for over two decades, Paysage aux Collettes previously formed part of the prestigious collection of Blanche Swift Morris. Born in France, Blanche de Bilbao enjoyed early success in the theatre in Paris before marrying Colonel Nelson Swift Morris in 1933. The couple had homes in Chicago and Miami Beach and were known for their patronage of the arts and philanthropic contributions. The present work was sold in 1984 to benefit charity, alongside significant works by Henri Fantin-Latour, Eugène Boudin, Maurice de Vlaminck, Louis Valtat, Suzanne Valadon, Moïse Kisling and Camille Pissarro.