Renoir
Page 8
Renoir, 1875. Photographer unknown. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Starting in 1875, another patron who helped Renoir was Eugène Murer, a pastry cook who owned and ran a restaurant at 95 boulevard Voltaire (in the eleventh arrondissement), where Renoir and his Impressionists friends sometimes ate.206 By 1885, Murer had acquired ‘twenty-five Pissarros, twenty-eight Sisleys, ten Monets, sixteen Renoirs, eight Cézannes, twenty-two Guillaumins, and several others’.207 Since some of the artists were then poor, it seems likely that Murer traded them meals for artworks.
Murer purchased one of the last paintings for which Lise modelled, The Harem (Parisians dressed as Algerians), which Renoir had unsuccessfully sent to the Salon of 1872. Murer also bought eight paintings of 1876: The Artist’s Studio; Rue Saint-Georges; Confidences; Portrait of Sisley; Rivière and Margot; Woman dressed in Black; The Tunnel; The Ingenue; and a landscape, Garden of rue Cortot in Montmartre,208 which depicted the garden behind the studio that Renoir rented when he was working on Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette. The following year, 1877, Murer commissioned family portraits of himself, two of his sister, Marie (later Mme Gérôme Doucet), and of his son, Paul Meunier.209 Renoir had initially asked Murer for 150 francs for each, but Murer was willing to pay only 100 francs each, which Renoir accepted.210 At the same time, Murer commissioned portraits of himself, his sister and his son from Pissarro as well.211
When Renoir was thirty-six, Murer wrote in his journal of Renoir’s idio-syncracies: ‘So then – he burst out in his good-natured ogre’s voice, nervously rubbing his index finger under his nose as was his habit.’212 From this we learn that Murer perceived the artist as highly strung, anxious and nervous, but kind. The ‘ogre’ descriptor might refer to a voice roughened by years of chain-smoking cigarettes.
Perhaps Renoir’s most important patrons of 1876–79 were the book publisher, Georges Charpentier, and his wife, Marguerite. They met the artist when he was in desperate financial straits aged thirty-four. Charpentier had purchased three Renoir paintings at the Hôtel Drouot group auction on 24 March 1875.213 Between 1876 and 1880, Renoir painted several portraits of Georges, Marguerite and their two children (see pages 70 and 91).214 In 1876, Renoir decorated the stairwell of their home with two large oil portraits of a man and woman who closely resemble the Charpentiers.215 Other planned mural decorations for their home around 1879 included figures representing the four seasons.216 For the Charpentiers’ elegant dinner parties, Renoir designed an elaborate place setting for a ‘Madamoiselle Leabille’ as well as a menu depicting nine different courses.217
To M. and Mme Charpentier, Renoir submitted even more entreaties for financial help than to Duret: he asked for 300 francs for his rent and for smaller sums for daily needs (150 francs and 100 francs).218 His warm, playful personality made his pleas endearing. In one letter, dated ‘15 October, date rent is due’, he drew himself in his nightshirt next to his bed, embracing the postman who was bringing him money, and wrote that, if they sent him 150 francs for his rent, ‘I will do to you what I am doing to the postman. Kind regards, Renoir’ (see page 64).219
Beginning early in 1876, the Charpentiers’s Friday salons at their new town house, at 11–13 rue de Grenelle on the Left Bank, were one of Paris’s foremost literary, artistic and political gathering places. Several of the authors whom Charpentier published were among his guests: Théodore de Banville, Alphonse Daudet,220 Gustave Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Guy de Maupassant and Zola. In June 1878, the Charpentiers published an illustrated edition of Zola’s L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den), a novel about the poverty and alcoholism in the Parisian working class, with woodcuts after drawings by many artists including Renoir. One of Renoir’s four illustrations221 was Nana and her Friends, which presents a joyful scene despite the depressed nature of Zola’s novel.222
Other attendees of the Charpentier salons numbered Salon artists, politicians and composers, including Emmanuel Chabrier, Jules Massenet and Camille Saint-Saëns. Of these, Chabrier later became Renoir’s patron and purchased four of his paintings of 1876–79.223 The Salon artists included Charles-Émile-Auguste Carolus-Duran and Jean-Jacques Henner. The liberal politicians who attended included the future president Georges Clémenceau, Jules Ferry, Léon Gambetta and Jacques-Eugène Spuller.
Cartoon drawing in letter from Renoir to Georges Charpentier, 1875-77. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Renoir hoped that some of these politicians would be interested in hiring him to create murals for public buildings. Given his 1877 passionate writings about the way decoration in contemporary architecture should be done,224 it is not surprising that he wanted to work in this manner again, as he had for Prince Bibesco. This goal might explain why many of Renoir’s most important canvases, such as The Inn of Mother Anthony, Marlotte, 1866,225 and Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette, 1876, are large canvases, suitable for covering walls in public spaces. Since cement was a good surface for varicoloured painting, in 1877, Renoir painted at least five small works on MacLean cement.226 They were part of a project subsidized by Caillebotte, who financed Alphonse Legrand to become the agent for the London MacLean Cement Company.227
Related to this ambition of decorating public spaces, Renoir asked Charpentier for help getting commissions for murals, and Charpentier suggested that he see his friend, the politician Spuller, whose portrait Renoir had painted in 1877.228 Renoir did so, but ran into problems winding his way through the bureaucracy. In a letter to Charpentier, Renoir wrote: ‘Spuller…wants me to tell him: I want to have this ceiling or that wall or staircase in such-and-such a place…. I’ve ended up thinking that the only one who can give him this information is the Secretary General M. [Joseph] Bardoux [Minister of Fine Arts], who is your friend’s [Georges] Lafenestre boss.’229 Lafenestre was Inspector of Fine Arts. In a second letter, Renoir reported: ‘I saw Lafenestre…. He told me to speak to the city but I think that it isn’t going to work.’230 In the end, the Charpentiers were not able to help Renoir in this quest to paint public murals.
They were able, nevertheless, to help get his works accepted by the official Salon. Thus, Renoir decided to abandon the Impressionist group shows after repeated failure to interest the public. By the end of 1877, he had followed in the footsteps of Manet, eschewed the group exhibitions and again submitted to the Salon. He shared his intentions with his fellow Impressionists and was joined by three others – Cézanne, Monet and Sisley. The 1878 Salon jury accepted works by all except Cézanne.
Self-Portrait, 1876, 73.7 × 57 cm (29 × 22½ in.). The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass. Bequest of Maurice Wertheim
Chapter 2
1878–84
Renoir aged 37–43;
Happiness, Poverty and Aline
During the years when Renoir was aged thirty-seven through forty-three, he created his greatest paintings – including Luncheon of the Boating Party and the three dance panels, Dance at Bougival, Country Dance and City Dance.1 In many ways these were Renoir’s happiest seven years, when his creativity flourished. Yet, within that time, in late January 1880, Renoir broke his right arm. Seemingly miraculously, he continued painting prolifically. Marguerite and Georges Charpentier were the key people who aided him in overcoming poverty, public hostility, poor reviews and lack of sales and commissions.
Renoir’s appearance in this period is recorded in several self-portraits (see page 90) and an etching by his friend Marcellin Desboutin (see page 69). By 1878 Renoir was also helping himself by modifying his style. He realized that he could not support himself with figure paintings in his Impressionist style, so he gradually invented a variant, Realistic Impressionism, which was closer to photography. Photographs were immensely popular at this time and could sell for the same price as a Renoir portrait.2 Hence he modified his style, with less visible brushstrokes and stronger colour contrasts to give the figure a more natural appearance. This style can be seen in most of his figure paintings from around 1878 to 1883. By 1878, he had resigned himself to se
ek portrait commissions from patrons who, he hoped, would also purchase his scenes of daily life. In this endeavour, Renoir’s patron and friend Duret tried to help in his 1878 pamphlet, The Impressionist Painters: ‘Renoir excels in portraiture…. I doubt that any painter has ever depicted women in a more seductive way.’3 From 1864 through 1885, Renoir painted close to 400 figure paintings. Of these, about 164 were portraits. Becoming a fashionable portraitist was somewhat distasteful to him since he had to pander to the patron’s taste to get paid. Hence, his artistic freedom was compromised, and he was sometimes prevented from painting as he wished.
After the double disasters that were the 1877 Impressionist show and sale, the group decided not to hold an exhibition the next year. The Charpentiers urged Renoir to return to exhibiting at the Salon, which would take place from 26 May to 8 July 1878. In March of that year, a letter from Pissarro to Caillebotte asserted: ‘the Charpentiers are pushing Renoir’.4 Renoir was willing to follow the Charpentiers’ direction and he sent a daily-life scene, The Cup of Chocolate, painted early that year, which, though accepted at the Salon of 1878, got little recognition from the critics.5
One of the first major paintings in Renoir’s new Realistic Impressionist style was the large Mme Charpentier and her Children (see page 91), completed in mid-October 1878,6 which is here illustrated with a contemporary photograph of the children, Georgette and Paul (see page 70). In both the photograph and painting, Paul wears a dress and has his hair long, like his sister. Once Paul went to school, he would cut his hair and wear trousers. It took Renoir about a month to complete the work and he was paid 1,500 francs.7 Once the portrait hung at their home, Renoir wrote to Mme Charpentier asking if friends could come to view the work: ‘M. Charles Ephrussi and M. Deudon…requested that I ask for your permission to see your portrait’8 and, ‘Mme Manet (Morisot, 40, rue de Villejust) asked…for permission to see your portrait.’9 The Charpentiers were happy to allow such visits. Charles Deudon was the heir to a mining fortune. Earlier that year, in May 1878, Deudon had bought Renoir’s Dancer from Durand-Ruel for 1,000 francs.10 Ephrussi, who was from Odessa, Russia, but came to Paris in 1872, was the son of a wealthy Jewish family who had business interests in corn and banking.11
With the masterful portrait of Mme Charpentier and her children prominently displayed in their home, attendees at their weekly Friday dinners, impressed with Renoir’s work, also began to commission portraits. These commissions were such a boon to Renoir that, in February 1879, Cézanne could write to his patron Chocquet: ‘I’m happy to learn of Renoir’s success.’12
In 1879, the Impressionist group show of 10 April–11 May preceded the Salon, which began on 12 May. While there had been no group show in 1878, in 1879, Renoir had to make a choice between exhibiting with his friends or at the Salon. Although he wanted his friends to think he was a passive follower, in reality, he was not. When an issue was important for his career, Renoir showed no hesitation in acting in his own best interests and was not at all passive. In 1879, he refused to exhibit with his friends at the fourth Impressionist show, even though his friend Monet did join the group and exhibited twenty-nine works.13 Others who also participated there included Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas and Pissarro. Following Renoir, both Cézanne and Sisley refused to exhibit with the group and, like Renoir, submitted works to the 1879 Salon jury instead. Unfortunately, the paintings of both Cézanne and Sisley were rejected, but all of Renoir’s submissions were accepted, thanks to Mme Charpentier. Since she knew members of the Salon jury, including the academic painter Henner, all four of the portraits that Renoir submitted were accepted: two oils (Mme Charpentier and her Children and the actress Jeanne Samary and two pastels (one of a man and one of the Charpentier’s little boy, Paul).14 However, only the portrait of Mme Charpentier and her Children was hung in a favourable position. Twenty-five years later, in an interview, Renoir said: ‘I had a canvas, yes, just one, but it was a very well placed painting. It was, it’s true, the portrait of Madame Charpentier. Madame Charpentier wanted to be in a very good position, and Madame Charpentier knew the members of the jury, whom she lobbied vigorously.’15
Marcellin Desboutin, Renoir, c. 1876–77. Etching, 16 × 11 cm (6¼ × 4⅜ in.). Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Renoir was aware of his indebtedness to Mme Charpentier. He acknowledged this directly to her, deferentially closing his letters: ‘Your very devoted, Renoir’ or ‘Your humble painter, A. Renoir’.16 After the May 1879 Salon, he also wrote to her husband, ‘to thank Madame Charpentier from her most devoted artist and, if one day I succeed, it will be entirely thanks to her, because I would most certainly not have been capable of doing so on my own’.17 Because he had become close to Mme Charpentier, Renoir tried to interest her in the plight of the poor children of Montmartre; he suggested that she establish an infant care centre. Perhaps it was his own feelings of despair for the loss of his first-born, Pierre Tréhot, that fuelled his interest. Mme Charpentier had other concerns at the time but in 1891, she did establish a charity for poor infants.18
Georgette and Paul Charpentier, c. 1878. Photographer unknown
While the 1879 Salon was in progress, Renoir wrote to Caillebotte: ‘Personally, I am having the time of my life. The portrait of Madame Charpentier is hung at eye-level and it looks ten times better than at her house. As for the painting of Mlle Samary, it is hung very high. All in all, I think it’s good since everyone is talking to me about it. I think I have greatly improved in my appeal to the masses.’19
In addition, Mme Charpentier’s painting gained many favourable reviews.20 One critic characterized it as ‘a charming work by Renoir who has become fashionable’.21 Renoir was launched as a portraitist. From 1879 through 1881, he made 21 portraits of children, 15 of women and 11 of men. As he wrote to Mme Charpentier, ‘I started a portrait this morning. I will continue working on another this evening and I am probably going to start a third afterwards.’22 Pissarro, meanwhile, wrote to Murer: ‘Renoir…is having a great success at the Salon. I think he is hitting his stride. Good for him! Poverty is so hard to endure!’23
During the 1879 Salon, Renoir began planning a solo pastel portrait exhibition for 19 June–3 July, in the gallery at Charpentier’s editorial offices at 7 boulevard des Italiens. In May, Renoir wrote to Mme Charpentier: ‘I will exhibit [the portrait of Mlle Samary]24 in your gallery because I’d like, if the gentlemen [in charge] consent, to mount an exhibit only of my portraits, that will attract many people, I think. I have quite a few well-known portraits.’25 While Renoir’s intention was to display only portraits, this show included his painting of two young circus performers and decorative sketches of the four seasons.26
Around the same time as the 1879 Salon, the Charpentiers had begun publishing a magazine, La Vie moderne. In April, they employed Renoir’s brother Edmond as a writer and, in 1884–85, as editor-in-chief. While Renoir’s pastel portrait show of thirty works was in progress, Edmond published an article about his brother in the June 1879 issue: ‘I promised you a portrait in twenty lines: pensive, dreamy, sombre, a far-away look in his eyes, you’ve seen him run across the boulevard twenty times; forgetful, disorganized, he’ll come back ten times for the same thing without remembering to do it; always running on the street, always motionless indoors; he’ll stay for hours without moving or talking: what’s he thinking about? The painting he’s working on or the one he’s going to work on; talk of painting as little as possible. But if you want to see his face light up, if you want to hear him – oh, miracle! – hum some gay refrain, don’t look for him while he’s eating or in places where one would go to have fun, but try to catch him while he’s working.’27 In addition to describing his brother, Edmond also wrote about Renoir’s manner of painting: ‘the portrait of Mme Charpentier and her children [was] painted at her home without displacing her pieces of furniture from their everyday places, and where nothing was changed to emphasize one part or another of the picture.’28 Possibly thanks to Renoir’s encouragement, the
Charpentiers put on an exhibition of Monet’s work at their Vie Moderne gallery in June 1880 and one of Sisley’s in May 1881.
Renoir, too, occasionally contributed to La Vie moderne. He once passed on an idea of Mme Paul Bérard to Mme Charpentier: ‘It is, on the last page of La Vie moderne, to present the fashion of the week. I would be responsible for making very exact drawings…. We could make an arrangement with hatters and dressmakers. One week of hats, another of dresses…. I would go to their places to make life drawings from different angles.’29 While we do not know if that particular idea ever came to fruition, various drawings of women’s hats and dresses by Renoir appeared in the magazine through 1884.30 To illustrate La Vie moderne, Renoir also contributed other drawings, including one of Edmond reading.31
During this time, Renoir continued to submit works to the Salon. In 1880, Monet joined him there and refused to participate in the group show.32 Renoir, having had his first big Salon success the year before, now sent the Salon two daily-life paintings (Mussel Fishers at Berneval, 1879, and Sleeping Girl with Cat, 1880), and two pastel portraits (Lucien Daudet and Mlle M.B. [Marthe Bérard]).33 Since Mme Charpentier had no family portraits submitted, she did not assist Renoir in getting his works well placed. Without her help, Renoir’s art got little attention from the critics, but he had become popular enough that he continued to have portrait clients. After the 1880 Salon, Cézanne wrote to Zola: ‘I was told Renoir is getting some good commissions to make portraits.’34 One of those commissions came from Victor Chocquet, who asked Renoir to make a pastel portrait on paper of Cézanne that is prominently dated ‘Renoir.80’. Chocquet lent it to Cézanne, who copied Renoir’s pastel in oil on wood; the copy is of similar dimensions as the original.35