Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Impressionism as an art movement originated in France in the mid-1800s and was founded by a group of artists that would meet at the Café Guerbois in Montmartre in Paris. These included Claude Monet, Édouard Manet and Auguste Renoir. They were influenced by a number of new ideas, primarily the invention of photography, which gave them a new experience of movement in an image.

The impressionists further developed outdoor painting and adapted their techniques thereafter. Thus new ideas about interpreting reality and the reproduction of the effects of light and shade became central. They experimented with different colour contrasts, through which they discovered that yellow and violet, for example, had a more powerful contrasting effect than black and white.

Auguste Renoir was one of the most prominent impressionists and landscape painting was an integral part of his oeuvre. Throughout his life he painted landscapes in all their forms, from Parisian parks and open places in the surrounding Seine valley cities, to impressions of his longer journeys in France and Italy. Renoir’s landscapes were rarely included in the annual Paris Salon, but played a significant role in both his contribution to the impressionist group exhibitions and in his collaboration with the art dealer and gallerist Paul Durand-Ruel. The gallerist, who was highly associated with the impressionists, bought about 1500 pieces by Renoir in total between 1891 and 1922. To Renoir landscape painting was a way of developing and fine-tuning his artistic skills and in a letter to Berthe Morisot from 1892 he referred to the genre as “the only way to learn your craft” (quoted in Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London, 2007, p. 190).

Renoir’s landscapes are more varied and experimental in colour and technique than his paintings of people. In contrast to many of his impressionist colleagues he depicted the French landscape as unchanged by time, free from all signs of industrial development or modern life. He worked outdoors, ‘en plein-air’ in the impressionist manner, and would produce both sketches and completed works in this way. The outdoor environment demanded quick, light brushstrokes and Renoir utilised this in order to transmit impressions of light and atmosphere with a great sensibility and feeling.

In 1907 Auguste Renoir and his wife Aline moved to the area close to the picturesque village of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Côte d’Azur. He bought a piece of land on which he erected ‘Les Collettes’, a beautiful two-storey stone building that to this day is preserved as a museum dedicated to the artist. The home with its studio was surrounded by lush olive and citrus groves, and had a vast view across the Mediterranean. The peaceful spot and the surrounding landscape offered the artist a never-ending source of inspiration. For a long while Renoir had been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and the hope was that the warm climate and the light would improve his condition. However, Renoir’s health deteriorated by a stroke that meant he was in wheelchair from 1912 onwards. Weakened by illness and with limited mobility the artist still continued to paint up until his death, sometimes assisted by his son

Claude. His canvases were filled with a joy for life and he never ceased to experiment with colour and form. In the last years of his life and encouraged by his friend, the gallerist Ambroise Vollard, Renoir also began making sculptures, first as medallions and, for example, a bust of his son Claude, also called ‘Coco’, who was born in 1901. Later in the 1910s Renoir executed larger sculptures based on earlier paintings with the help of Richard Guino, then a student of the artist, and the sculptor Aristide Maillol.

The present painting was executed in 1916 and depicts the surroundings of Les Collettes, probably painted from a nearby spot in the garden. With short brushstrokes and bright colours the artist has created a shimmering image of a flowing landscape with blossoming bushes. The blue of the sea is like a mirage on the horizon and the golden yellow colour of the flowers brightens the foreground. There exist several photographs and films from this period showing the artist at his easel feverishly and passionately painting, despite being wheelchair-bound and limited by his arthritis. At this time in the 1900s Auguste Renoir was recognised and internationally appreciated as one of the leading and most prominent figures of impressionism. The crowning moment of his artistic career was the purchase by the Louvre of one of his works in 1919. This was a great honour for a living artist. Auguste Renoir continued to paint up until the moment of his death that same year, and was buried next to his wife Aline, who had passed away two years earlier.

The painting’s provenance is from the legendary Ohana Gallery in London, and was probably bought from there by the art collector Arild Wahlström in the 1950s or 70s. Arild Wahlström (1909-1994) was a Norwegian industrialist, the CEO and later Chairman of Sande Tresliperi A/S and Sande Paper Mill A/S. Apart from business and sport he had a great interest in art and art collecting, an interest he shared with his wife Aasta. In their home in the Holmenkollen area of Oslo the couple built an impressive collection of major Norwegian and international artworks. (see b/w photo) Wahlström travelled extensively and would often combine his business trips with visits to galleries and artists. He developed close relationships with several artists and met Serge Poliakoff, Hans Hartung, Anna-Eva Bergman, Henry Moore, Soulanges, Alfred Manessier, Gustave Singier, and many more. Arild Wahlström was invited three times to visit Picasso in the south of France with the gallerist Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, but each time, and to his great disappointment, business prevented him from going. Wahlström’s interest in Picasso’s prints had been aroused after the War, when on a business trip to Paris in 1946. In a little side street the Wahlström couple had discovered the image of a female head in the window of an art dealer. “It was so beautiful – we were both captivated at once. It was something extraordinary”. This event resulted in an intense bout of collecting, forming one of the largest private collections of Picasso prints in the world with over one thousand graphic sheets. In 1982 Arild Wahlström donated almost five hundred of these, including the entire Vollard Suite, to the National Museum in Oslo. Arild Wahlström and his wife were also passionate golfers and for a period Wahlström was the president of The European Golf Association.