Renoir
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Aunt Victorine approved of Aline staying in school because, since the autumn of 1871, when Aline turned twelve, she had boarded at her school and only came home at weekends and holidays. This kept Aline from being underfoot. A year after Aline started boarding, in a letter to her mother, Victorine suggested that Aline remain at boarding school during the winter of 1872–73 to continue learning more about sewing and then, in the spring, that she spend two to three months as an apprentice to a good dressmaker in Essoyes.75 Thus, due to a combination of her own love of school and her aunt’s wish to keep her out of the house, by age fourteen, Aline had become a seamstress. By the time she was fifteen, Aline’s behaviour had begun to worry her aunt. While Aline did not have female friends, in her early teen years she got involved with the local young men. Her aunt, thinking of Emilie’s plight, wrote that Aline had done some ‘foolish things’.76 Victorine reported: ‘She told me a lie that she should have known I would check for myself…. She was chasing after young Auguste. You know, you would think that it is child’s play, but don’t fool yourself. He is a little libertine that everyone talks about.’77 Shortly after she sent this letter, when Aline was fifteen, Victorine decided to get Aline away from the boys in Essoyes, and sent her to Paris where she joined her mother working as a seamstress. A few months later, on 4 December 1874, Victorine, aged only forty-six, died in an epidemic that killed many people in Essoyes. Aline was lucky to have left town when she did.
In Paris, Aline worked at various jobs to earn money. She did sewing and laundry, for both Renoir and Monet.78 She also worked as a waitress at a creamery on rue Saint-Georges, across the street from Renoir’s studio and apartment. Mlle Camille, a friend of Aline’s mother from Essoyes, owned this shop. It was not until Aline had lived in Paris for four years that she actually met Renoir, in September 1878. Seventeen years after they met, Berthe Morisot’s daughter, Julie Manet, wrote in her diary that Aline recalled: ‘the first time she saw M. Renoir he was with M. Monet and Sisley; all three wore their hair long and they caused quite a stir when they walked along the rue Saint-Georges where she lived’.79 Although Aline worked on rue Saint-Georges and lived with her mother close by, she wanted to hide their address because of the neighbourhood’s bad reputation.
Renoir’s first letter to Aline in September 1878 was polite. He addressed her with the formal French ‘vous’ and as ‘Mademoiselle’, while in all later letters, he addressed her with the familiar ‘tu’. The letter began with a business matter but was basically endearing. In a joking tone, he gave her some advice about her new job as assistant dairy-maid in the creamery: ‘Do not serve black soap water as coffee with milk…. Do not get up at noon; doing so might make serving the 7 a.m. hot chocolate a little bit difficult.’ He closed by saying: ‘give my compliments to Mlle Camille when she gets back…. I’ll bring you back a seashell for the trouble you’ve taken. Kind regards, Renoir.’80 As this playfulness shows, Renoir found the plump Aline attractive. He was always on the lookout for pretty women to model, and attraction and flirtation were part of his relationship with models, and that is what he seems to be building as early as this first letter to Aline.
As for Aline, this ambitious and well-connected single man held all the attractions of the good life of which she had been deprived as a child. When they met that September 1878, it was four months after Renoir had returned to the Salon and, thanks to Mme Charpentier’s help, was beginning to be appreciated as a fashionable portraitist. But it was not just his financial promise. Aline was truly smitten with Renoir and saved all the letters he ever sent.81
Renoir, being the same age as her mother, started out acting paternal and even bossy. Perhaps Aline, who had grown up without a father, found this treatment attractive. Certainly she never objected to it. In the first few years of their relationship, Renoir felt entitled to give her advice about her behaviour in a series of letters. During a hot spell he advised: ‘I hope that you are not being foolish and staying in that oven.’82 Another time: ‘Don’t be too bored. By the way, I am actually quite presumptuous, am I not?’83 Similarly, ‘Try to manage your time so that you don’t get too bored.’84 Renoir worried about Aline’s quick temper and argumentativeness, cautioning her: ‘Try not to get angry at anyone.’85 He also felt justified in instructing her on how to deal with her health problems. Wanting to avoid what could become a tense situation, Renoir told her: ‘Know that I won’t come back while you are having terrible migraines. Write if you are feeling better.’86
Copy of Rubens’s Hélène Fourment with her Son, c. 1863. 73 × 59 cm (28¾ × 23¼ in.). Private collection, Zoug, Morocco
Portrait of Monet, 1872. 60.3 × 48.2 cm (23¾ × 19 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Collection Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Upperville, Mass.
Bazille, Portrait of Renoir, 1867. 106.4 × 74.3 cm (41⅞ × 29⅛ in.) Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Painting of Bazille, 1867. 106.4 × 74.3 cm (41⅞ × 29⅛ in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The Inn of Mother Anthony, Marlotte, 1866. 193 × 129.5 cm (76 × 51 in.). National Museum, Stockholm
Lise and Sisley, 1868. 105 × 75 cm (42¼ × 30 in.). Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
Nymph at the Stream, 1869–70. 66.7 × 123 cm (26¼ × 48⅜ in.). National Gallery, London
Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876. 131 × 175 cm (51½ × 69 in.). Musée d’Osay, Paris. Bequest of Gustave Caillebotte
Cézanne, Bathers, c. 1876. 79 × 97.2 cm (31⅛ × 38¼ in.). Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pa.
Lise in a White Shawl, 1872. 56 × 47 cm (22 × 18¼ in.). Museum of Art, Dallas
The Artist’s Studio, Rue Saint-Georges, 1876–77. 45 × 36.8 cm (17¾ × 14½ in.). Norton Simon Art Foundation, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
Victor Chocquet, c. 1876. 45.7 × 35.6 cm (18 × 14 in.). Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur
Cézanne, Victor Chocquet, c. 1876. 35.2 × 27.3 cm (13⅞ 10¾ in.). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
Self-Portrait, 1875–79. 39.3 × 31.8 cm (15½ × 12½ in.). The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
Mme Georges Charpentier, c. 1877. 45 × 38 cm (17¾ × 15 in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Self-Portrait (with Head of a Woman) c. 1879. 19 × 14 cm (7½ × 5½ in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Mme Charpentier and her Children, 1878. 153.7 × 190.2 cm (60½ × 74⅞ in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Wolfe Fund
Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881. 129.5 × 172.7 cm. (51 × 68 in.). The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Blonde Bather, 1881. 81.6 × 66 cm. (32⅛ × 26 in.). The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
Lucie Bérard in a White Smock, 1884. 35 × 26.7 cm (13¾ × 10½ in.). Collection Pérez Simon, Mexico City
Dance at Bougival, 1883. 179.7 × 96 cm (70⅝ × 37¾ in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Country Dance, (Dance at Chatou), 1883. 180.3 × 90cm (71 × 35½ in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
City Dance, 1883. 180.3 × 90.1 cm (71 × 35½ in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Nursing (Aline and her Son, Pierre; third version) 1886. 73.7 × 54 cm. (29 × 21¼ in.). Private collection
Early in their relationship, Renoir insisted, as he had with Lise, that their affair be a secret. The artist was an extremely private person. It was known that Aline was one of several models whom Renoir employed beginning in 1879. However, only a few friends knew that Aline was also his mistress. Renoir’s secrecy about their relationship is evident in several letters he wrote to her. One said: ‘I am looking for a day when you can come and visit me without causing too much gossip in the vicinity.’87
At this point, Renoir had all the power in their relationship. However, years later, Aline would come to dominate. Even so, he found ways behind her back to get what he wanted, often pretending to be more passive than he really was. The beginning of the shift in power dynamics in their relationship is clear in their correspo
ndence. As time went by, his letters became less formal and in doing so, he gave up some of his control. He would address her as ‘My dear friend’ and end: ‘In friendship, with kisses, A. Renoir.’88
Aline also began to assert her own power, fishing for compliments and getting a predictable response. Once, when visiting Essoyes, she wrote asking if he felt she was ugly. He replied: ‘My dear beloved, I have just read your letter, full of desperation and mischievousness because you want me to respond to you with compliments. You know what? You are far from ugly. Actually, you are as beautiful as anyone could be…. I do not know if you are pretty or ugly, but I do know that I have a strong urge to misbehave again…. If you want, I could go to stay right next to Essoyes if you do not want to come back and I’ll come spend a day with you…because although you are so incredibly ugly, I have a desire to kiss you in all the right places, a mad desire…. I send you my love from afar… Crazy about you. Augustine.’89 The same love that Renoir passionately expressed in his letter is visualized in his penultimate masterpiece, Dance at Bougival of 1883.
A few years into their relationship, Renoir resigned himself to the fact that the headstrong Aline would do as she wished regardless of his advice. In 1881, when Aline asked if he thought it wise for her to vacation without him, he responded: ‘I am not going to prevent you from spending a few days in Chatou.’ He went on: ‘I would be happy if you do go. It’ll make you fix yourself up a little more. However, you have been neglecting your appearance for so long, that I cannot imagine a radical solution for reducing the size of your waist, but that is your business.’90 Renoir wanted Aline to take care of her looks and expressed concern about her figure, yet was resigned that she would do as she wished.
Despite these concerns about Aline’s girth, when Renoir painted her, which he did increasingly as time went on, he would regularly transform her looks according to his artistic goals. What he had in his imagination superseded what he saw with his eyes. Now, as always, it is impossible to identify which model posed for which figure, since Renoir not only painted the same model differently but also sometimes used different people as models for the same figure.91 As in the case of Lise, Aline was a source of inspiration, but Renoir never felt bound to follow her actual appearance. Aline had red hair, yet in 1881, he portrayed her as a blonde in Blonde Bather (see page 92), as a red-head in Luncheon of the Boating Party, and as a brunette in On the Terrace.92 Renoir also took artistic liberties with her figure. In 1881, Aline looks fat in Blonde Bather but thin in the other two.
Renoir’s love for Aline definitely had a positive influence on his art. Echoing his courtship of her, from 1879 through 1884, he painted his greatest paintings of the joys of romance in Paris and its suburbs – such as Luncheon of the Boating Party, Dance at Bougival and Country Dance.93 Aline was one of several women who posed for his scenes of daily life. She also modelled for single women indoors and out, a few images of mothers and children, and an increasing number of nudes (see page 194).94
The first painting for which Aline modelled is The Oarsmen at Chatou, 1879.95 Renoir’s friend Caillebotte posed with her. Chatou, where Renoir loved to paint, is a small town on the Seine 14 kilometres (9 miles) north-west of the centre of Paris. From the Gare Saint-Lazare (not far from Renoir’s studio), it was only a thirty-minute train ride away. In order to be able to stay at an inn there, the Maison Fournaise, Renoir bartered portraits that he made of the innkeeper’s family.96 He had first begun painting at Chatou in the mid-1870s, around the time when he wrote to Dr de Bellio: ‘Please choose a day to come here for lunch. You won’t regret having made the trip since it is the prettiest place near Paris.’97
The island at Chatou would also be the setting for one of Renoir’s greatest paintings, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881 (see page 92). In this work, begun a year after he met Aline, she posed as the key figure. She appears in the lower left, wearing a fashionable blue dress with a red and white trim at the collar and a yellow straw hat decorated with a ribbon and flowers. She tenderly holds a small terrier who sits on the table. This could be the same dog in Renoir’s 1880 painting of Aline in the grass.98 It also could be Aline’s pet, to whom Renoir refers in a letter: ‘My best to Quiqui or Kiki.’99
Renoir’s painting includes fourteen idealized portrayals of Renoir’s friends, who sit or stand around two tables after lunch on the terrace restaurant of the Maison Fournaise. Beyond the terrace, in the upper left corner, are boats on the Seine and a glimpse of the railway bridge. Behind Aline is the son of the restaurant owner, Alphonse Fournaise junior, who was in charge of rowing-boat hire. At the centre, we see the back of a seated man, Baron Raoul Barbier, a cavalry officer and the former mayor of colonial Saigon in Vietnam, who had returned to France in 1876. Barbier talks with Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the restaurant owner, who leans on the railing. The seated woman drinking out of a glass is Ellen Andrée, an actress who sometimes also posed for Manet and Degas. Seated next to her, we see the profile of an unidentified man. Behind him, with his back to us in a black top hat, is the wealthy banker, editor and art historian, Charles Ephrussi. Facing him is his secretary, the poet and critic Jules Laforgue. At the upper right are three of Renoir’s close friends who frequently posed for him: the man at the left with a black bowler hat is Eugène-Pierre Lestringuez, a government official. Next to him is Paul Lhôte, an officer in the navy and journalist who has his arm around the famous actress Jeanne Samary. She covers her ears to avoid hearing something risqué that the men are saying to her. Seated at the extreme right, looking at Aline and smoking a cigarette, is Renoir’s close friend Caillebotte, an avid boatman and sailor.100 Behind him is the actress Angèle and the Italian journalist M. Maggiolo. This crowd of Renoir’s friends, dressed in modern finery, enacts his usual themes of enjoying life through food, drink and sociability. Romance is also present: Caillebotte looks at Aline; Barbier engages with Alphonsine Fournaise; two men flirt with Samary.
The date that Renoir began this large work has been disputed. Yet in three letters, we learn that he began working on Luncheon in September 1879, continued to work on it a year later, in August and September 1880, and completed it when his dealer purchased it five months later, in February 1881, after sixteen months of work. A letter from Renoir to Bérard in September 1879 clearly states that the work was just beginning: ‘I hope to see you in Paris on 1 October for I am in Chatou…. I am working on a painting of some boaters, something I have been dying to do for a long time. I am starting to get old and I didn’t want to delay this little festivity any further…. It’s expensive enough already. I don’t know if I will complete it, but I told Deudon about my hardships, and he nevertheless agreed with me that even if the great expense did not enable me to finish my painting, it’s still a step forward: every once in a while you must attempt things that seem too difficult.’101 Renoir’s major expense was that this large painting, some 130 by 173 centimetres (51 by 68 inches), took time that he could have spent making portraits for money. However, since his models were his friends, it is doubtful that he paid them. Yet he had the expense of canvas and oils as well as sometimes boarding at the Maison Fournaise.
The second relevant letter – in August 1880 from Renoir to Aline – confirms that he continued to work on the painting, which he then hoped to complete in the later part of 1880: ‘My dear friend, Tell Madame Alphonsine that I’m thinking of going to Chatou around the 8th of September, unless the weather is bad. I would like to finish my luncheon of the boaters which is at the Baron’s.’102 Barbier stored this large work in his Chatou residence.
In the third letter, written in mid-September 1880, Renoir wrote to Bérard of his great impatience to complete the painting and his annoyance with an unexpected portrait commission: ‘My dear friend, I still have to work on this blasted painting because of an upper crust tart who had the audacity to come to Chatou and demand to pose. This has put me fifteen days behind in my work…. I am more and more irritated…. I will waste just another week here
, since I have done everything, and I will return to doing my portraits.’ He continued: ‘I will write you next week. I hope that I finally will have finished…. Ah! I vow this will be the last large painting.’ Confirming that this letter to Bérard was written in early September 1880, Renoir closed it with: ‘Has André returned to his school?’103 André, Bérard’s oldest child, then eleven, attended a private boarding school and had to leave Wargemont by early September.104
Renoir’s Luncheon took sixteen months to paint because of an unforeseen event. After spending four months working on it, Renoir broke his right arm in a fall from his bicycle in January 1880 and had to work left-handed. He reacted to this accident with acceptance and a sense of humour. He wrote to his patron Duret: ‘I have been enjoying working with my left hand; it is a lot of fun and it’s even better than what I did with the right. I think that it was a good thing that I broke my arm. It allows me to make progress.’ He continued: ‘I’m not thanking you for the turmoil that my accident has caused you, but am very flattered by it and I greatly appreciate all of the sympathy that I’ve received from everyone.... I will be completely better in around a week. I have Doctor Terrier to thank for this quick cure; he was remarkable.’105 It seems that Renoir became ambidextrous; almost twenty years later, Pissarro wrote to his son: ‘Didn’t Renoir, when he broke his right arm, do some ravishing paintings with his left hand?’106 Despite his broken arm, that year Renoir signed ‘Renoir.80’ on thirteen works including At the Concert, Girl with the Cat, The First Step and Girl with Hat, plus ten commissioned portraits.107 Having a broken arm did not deter the painter; indeed, he vigorously overcame his problem and forged ahead.