307. AUGUSTE RENOIR (FRANKRIKE, 1841-1919). "Etude de nus".

"Étude de nus", executed 1905-1910. Oil on canvas, 14 x 25 cm.

A verso from left, label: R. No 3., label: Chenue Emballeur, Rue de la terrasse.

PROVENANCE
Swedish private collection

EXHIBITED
"French art: exhibition organized with Swedish European aid", Föreningen för nutida konst, 13 April - 5 May 1946, Stockholm. Catalog no. 20, catalog no. 80.

LITERATURE
"French art: exhibition organized with Swedish European aid", Föreningen för nutida konst, 13 April - 5 May 1946. Catalog no. 20. Listed in "Supplement to catalogue" No. 20, as “Deux Pêches” by Auguste Renoir catalog no. 80.

Certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Plattner Institute is included.

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“Étude de nus”
A bright sunlight illuminates two peaches and makes their brown skins shine. In the composition, there is no dish or tablecloth. It is on a bed of flowers that the fruit has fallen a summer day in the garden of "Les Colettes".

Last time the study, at the time titled "Deux Pêches" was publicly shown, was in Stockholm in 1946 in the exhibition "French art: exhibition organized with Swedish European aid". Today it is back on the market, almost 100 years since the painting was purchased in Paris in the 1930s. The fabric of colors is as vibrant now and the splendor of nature as exquisite as it was by then. However, the title has been adjusted, Stockholms Auktionsverk proudly presents: "Étude de nus".

During Renoir's long life as an artist, the woman was his greatest source of both inspiration and joy. Never tired of depicting her he continued to develop his depictions of face and anatomy as long as he painted. The booty, he is said to have shamelessly expressed, is a woman's most beautiful body part. Equally unabashedly should be considered this study, where women with backs and backboards are in symbiosis with the crackling surrounding greenery. Here, beauty is celebrated in a paradisiacal motif that hovers between fantasy and reality.

Renoir was born in 1842 in the city of Limoges in western France. The father, who was a tailor, took the family to Paris in 1845 in the hope of more work. Renoir became an apprentice in a porcelain studio and eventually a porcelain painter. His great aptitude and interest in painting meant that in 1862 he was able to initiate his studies at l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Not completely satisfied with teaching, he also studied in Charles Gleyre's studio, where he formed his lifelong friendships with Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Fréderic Bazille.

In the growing peer group of like-minded young artists, they sought out nature in the spirit of plein air painting. In the forest of Fontainebleau and along the coastlines of the Seine, they developed a painterly technique based on the movement of light. Gradually, the expression became increasingly prismatic in a bright and light color scale. The subjects were captured in moments, in an "impression". Landscape painting was combined with depictions of the social life that began to emerge in the squares and parks of the new Paris. The group was named after the first and legendary exhibition in photographer Félix Nadar's studio in 1974.

In the group, Renoir was the foremost portrayer of people and above all of women. He portrayed strangers as well as friends, poor and rich. In the mid-1880s, he turned his gaze back to the great masters' more mythological depictions of the female body. He particularly studied the Baroque painter Paul Peter Rubens, as well as his follower, the Rococo painter Antoine Watteau. In this classical school, both motifs and ideals sprung primarily from the ancient pictorial world. The women had forms and were given space, while being dance-like and floating in their gestures.

In Renoir's late painting after the turn of the last century, the impressions from classical art are palpable. The female body got a more generous silhouette and the design language became more sensual, in a borderland between fantasy and reality. His color palette also became stronger, more earthy, at the same time that his spontaneous rhythmic brushwork again became more and more marked.

In 1903 Renoir moved with his family to Cagnes outside Antibes. In a large olive grove, the house "les Colettes" was built with a flourishing attached outdoor studio. Most likely, it was in this colorful nature with its warming sun that "Étude de nus" was created. The painting is very representative of Renoir's late period with its clear heritage from classical art in symbiosis with sketchy impressionism. He made countless studies on large sheets of paper which then sometimes turned into his own small exquisite works. Not infrequently, anatomy is combined with fruit still lifes in colorful, rhythmic color parties. The motif in the auction's work represents women who, through an illusion of vision, can be replaced by peaches. Not impossible, it is a deliberate little prank on our visual perception that Renoir has achieved.

Renoir stayed out of theoretical discussions and therefore maintained a purity in his pursuit of beauty. Although he himself was not interested in the contemporary artistic development, his late production, with works such as "Étude de nus", functioned as a bridge between the pioneering impressionist painting and the advancing expressionism. Renoir's importance as one of the greatest artists in our Western art history cannot be underestimated, for the individual viewer's experience of beauty, as well as for continued artistic development.