Gradually, Renoir softened this stiffness as he developed the style. While the ultimate goal of Impressionism (as in Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette) was to show life in constant motion, in an Ingrist Impressionist work (as in his key work in this style, The Large Bathers, 1887, on which see Chapter 3295), the foreground figures capture the stillness of a frozen moment while the background remains Impressionist. Renoir’s goal was to create a new classical mural painting as an alternative to that of Puvis de Chavannes;296 it would combine the simplicity and grandeur of Classicism with the light, colourful style of Impressionism and would be suitable as decoration for the walls of public buildings or wealthy people’s homes. Hence when he first exhibited The Large Bathers, he subtitled it Experiment in Decorative Painting (Essai de peinture décorative).
In 1884, Renoir first tried out this new Ingrist Impressionist style with a portrait of the youngest daughter of Paul Bérard. The year before, Renoir had painted three-year-old Lucie in a white blouse and smock. When she was four, Renoir again painted her and wrote to Bérard that he had not yet completed the ‘little head of Lucie in my new style’, jokingly declaring that this style would become ‘the last word in art…one always believes one has invented the train until the day when one notices that it doesn’t work…. I am beginning a little late in life to know how to wait, having made enough fiascos like that. (see page 93).’297 It is presumed that Renoir painted that first Ingrist Impressionist work of 1884 from a photograph. A while later, during the summer of 1884, when staying with the Bérards at Wargemont, he further elaborated this style in a large, exhibition-size group portrait, Afternoon of the Children at Wargemont.298 Lucie is in the centre, holding her doll, Marguerite aged ten reads a book on the sofa at left and Marthe aged fourteen sews at right. The painting is Renoir’s first large work in the new Ingrist Impressionist style. During that year, he also experimented in Ingrist Impressionism in works such as the portrait of the boy Paul Haviland and the genre painting, Girl with Straw Hat (see page 93).299
Renoir was not the only Impressionist looking to evolve a unique style. In March 1884, Monet wrote to his wife that Renoir’s struggles echoed the other Impressionists’ frustrating quests to evolve their art individually: ‘Renoir wrote…that he spent all of his time working and then scratching out his work. We [Impressionists] are definitely struggling and yet people will always criticize us for not making any effort.’300 At the same time, in May 1884, Durand-Ruel, the main dealer for most of them, was facing bankruptcy as a result of the collapse of the Union Générale bank two years earlier. Renoir and Monet urged their dealer to sell their paintings at low prices, Renoir writing: ‘As for the paintings, if you must make sacrifices [sell them for little], don’t worry about it. I’ll make more for you and they will be better.’301
That June, during this time of Renoir’s artistic and financial uncertainty, Aline became pregnant. Renoir was then forty-three. His father had been forty-two when Renoir was born, so perhaps the artist felt this was good timing for him. Unlike when Lise had been pregnant with his children, now both Aline and Renoir hoped to be able to raise their child. Renoir’s secret relationship with Aline was stable and happy even though the rest of his world was unsettled.
Lucie Bérard, 1883. 35 × 27 cm (24¼ × 19¾ in.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Collection of Mr and Mrs Martin A. Ryerson
Chapter 3
1885–93
Renoir, aged 44–52;
Baby Pierre,
Success and Sickness
Several months before Aline gave birth to Renoir’s son Pierre on 21 March 1885, the artist painted a radiant portrait of her that captures her joyfulness during her pregnancy with her first child (see page 194). She appears noticeably heavier than in Country Dance (see page 95) and Dance at Bougival (see page 94), for which she had modelled two years earlier.1 A true rustic, she wears a straw hat and peasant jacket; she wears no wedding ring. Pierre’s birth certificate specifies that he was born at home ‘at 6 o’clock [in the morning], at 18 rue Houdon [Paris], son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a 44 year old painter, [who] has declared his recognition, and of Aline Victorine Charigot, 25 years old, without a profession, living at the aforementioned address’.2 Aline did not record that she was a model perhaps because of modelling’s low reputation. It seems to have been Renoir who decided on the names of his first two children with both Lise and with Aline: his firstborn son with each woman has his own first name, Pierre, and his second child with each woman was named Jean or its female equivalent, Jeanne.
Renoir decided not to marry Aline at this point so that he would not have to be financially responsible for her. As a devout Catholic, Aline might well have had objections to having a child out of wedlock, but with the example of her own mother, who had been forced to wed and then abandoned, she knew that being married guaranteed neither fidelity nor support. Renoir was following the same path as many of his artist friends – Cézanne, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley – who had had children with their mistress models but did not marry them because they feared they would not be able to support them. All these friends, however, later married their children’s mothers, once each artist became financially stable. They had also legally recognized their children at their births so that their children had their father’s last name, as did Renoir, giving his son Pierre his last name, Renoir.
Portrait of Aline, 1885. 65.4 × 55.2 cm (25¾ × 21¼ in.). The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The W.P. Wilstach Collection
In recognizing Pierre, Renoir had changed from how he had acted towards Lise at their children’s births: both Pierre and Jeanne Tréhot had their mother’s last name, as noted in Chapter 1. Now, by recognizing his newest child and giving him his last name, the painter was legally accepting the financial responsibility of fatherhood. Two days after the birth, Renoir, accompanied by his brother and a friend, took his newborn to the eighteenth arrondissement town hall. The birth certificate states that Renoir recognized his son ‘in the presence of Victor Renoir,3 a 48-year-old tailor living at 35 rue Laval [in the nearby suburb of Saint-Cloud] and Corneille Cornet, a 39-year-old cabinet maker residing at rue des Trois Frères [in Montmartre].’ Renoir chose Caillebotte as the baby’s godfather, one of a select few who knew about Aline and infant Pierre. Others who shared the secret included Renoir’s brother Edmond and certain friends (Cézanne, Monet, Murer, Pissarro, Sisley and Drs Gachet and de Bellio). Meanwhile, most of his wealthy upper-class friends and patrons (including people to whom he was close – Bérard, Durand-Ruel and Berthe Morisot, who was the sister-in-law of his mentor, Manet) only knew Aline as his model and did not know about their child. This created a double life that Renoir lived until he married Aline five years later, in 1890.
Renoir was firm in his desire for secrecy concerning his newborn. During Pierre’s childhood, he wrote to Murer when the collector’s friend, the writer and journalist Paul Alexis (also known as Trublot), was writing an article on Murer’s art collection, which included about thirty Renoir paintings. ‘If you see Trublot tell him he’s a very nice fellow, but that I’d be very happy if he didn’t say a word about me; he can say as much as he wants about my canvases, but I hate the idea of the public knowing how I eat my cutlets and whether I was born of poor but honest parents. Painters are very boring with their pitiful stories, and people don’t give a damn about them.’4
This insistence on privacy stemmed from Renoir’s need to keep his career afloat in an upper-class milieu despite his own continuing financial difficulties. The Parisian elite, however, were not the only people from whom Renoir kept secrets. He never told Aline, for example, about his previous two children with Lise. For Renoir, keeping secrets was a way of keeping control. By hiding different parts of his life from different friends, he maintained a state of separation and autonomy, a world in which he was the only person who knew everything; none of his friends or family knew about all his varied friendships. Even Pissarro, who was an exceptionally perceptive person, could write (to his son in 1887):
‘Nor can I understand Renoir’s comment at all…but who can fathom that most inconsistent of men?’5 Pissarro’s words – ‘le plus changeant des hommes’ – can be translated as inconsistent, changeable, changing or fickle. And Renoir was indeed complex and variable: sometimes passive but other times assertive, sometimes indecisive but other times clear-minded, sometimes shy but other times forceful. He fostered his reputation for passivity, indecision and shyness in order not to appear threatening to his friends who were sometimes also his benefactors. Secrecy enabled him to maintain control and to steer his own ship.
Even though Renoir was determined to keep his private life a secret, the subject matter of his art reflected what he was hiding from his friends. Previously, he had often painted men and women romancing in modern Paris. After Pierre was born, he never depicted an adult man wooing an adult woman in a modern setting. Indeed, Renoir’s settings change to become timeless, secluded rural places. From this time forwards, adult men almost completely disappear from Renoir’s paintings. They are replaced, at Pierre’s birth, by male children. Thereafter, he no longer painted large groups of figures in the city and suburbs. Instead, he painted individuals and small groups of women and children in the country. Renoir began to paint Aline in all kinds of traditional scenes that often call to mind earlier images of the Virgin and Christ Child. He replaced modernity and contemporary fashion with figures in simple, timeless garments.
Many works record Aline’s activities as a new mother. In 1885 and 1886, Renoir made three paintings of Aline nursing Pierre in a rural setting (see page 96), for which he made precise preparatory drawings (see page 137).6 They call to mind Renaissance Madonna and Child images in which the Virgin is nursing a semi-nude male infant.7 As in some Christian images, Aline’s breast and Pierre’s penis are visible.8 Renoir was fond of these images and kept the first painting in his studio until his death. (Beyond images of motherhood, Aline posed for many nudes, some reminiscent of Venuses in art of the past.) In numerous paintings and drawings she feeds Pierre seated in a high chair, hugs him while hanging up laundry, takes him boating, talks to him as she knits outside.9 Renoir painted Aline, one-year-old-Pierre and a neighbour outside a house in Brittany surrounded by trees with carefully delineated leaves, and in group scenes where Aline and her friends pick grapes, wash clothes and talk to an apple seller (see page 193).10 He also made numerous paintings, drawings and even a lithograph of his son alone.11 His nephew Edmond Renoir junior, who was a year older than his son, also features in many paintings and drawings.12
While Pierre and his life became a major theme in Renoir’s art, what the artist portrays is always a healthy, happy child. As usual, this was an idealized version of Renoir’s reality: Pierre was a sickly child and Renoir a concerned father. In May 1886, Renoir wrote to Caillebotte: ‘Pierre has been sick for five months, mucous fever [a mild form of typhoid] first, bronchitis second; we’re taking him outside for the first time today for five minutes.’13 A year later, on 10 June 1887, when Pierre was two, he had an operation that Renoir described to Murer: ‘my little one [had]…a delicate operation (on the foreskin). [The recovery] will take a long time and he won’t be able to leave here for some time.’14 Because Renoir was short of money, he gave the doctor a still life, Gladioli, inscribed ‘Au Docteur Latty/Souvenir d’amitié/Renoir’ (To Dr Latty, souvenir of friendship, Renoir).15
Pierre’s recuperation did not go well, and Renoir had concerns for both him and Aline. In mid-June, Renoir was on a painting trip and wrote to her: ‘I hope that Pierrot will finally improve and even recover completely. I have great faith in Latty, but this wound which won’t heal and which doesn’t seem to improve worries me. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s why, in my absence, I wanted to refer you to [Dr de] Bellio so that should something happen, you would know what to do and you wouldn’t be alone, but I still hope everything will turn out for the best.’ Pierre’s treatment was expensive, but Renoir was willing to exhaust his resources to protect his child. In the same letter, he responded to Aline’s concern about the cost of a train ticket should she need to take Pierre to a doctor: ‘Don’t worry about the extra 4 francs, 16 sous; all that matters is that the boy gets better. Kiss poor little Pierre.’16
As Renoir’s worries continued, he wrote to his two homeopathic doctor friends and patrons, de Bellio and Gachet, as he had eight years earlier when his model Margot had contracted smallpox (see Chapter 2). Now he implored de Bellio, ‘You would be so kind if you would come to see my kid, not as a doctor but as a friend – just to tell me what you think. He had an operation on his foreskin two weeks ago today and it isn’t healing because of the eczema. The doctor says it isn’t serious, but I am worried because of how long the [healing process] is taking and you may be able to give us some advice.’17 After de Bellio had examined Pierre, he convinced Renoir to have the operation redone. Renoir wrote to Murer: ‘My kid needs to be operated on again. I have been wearing myself out for the past two months to no avail dressing his wound and now we have to start all over again. This time I am selecting a good surgeon and I hope there will be no problems.’18 By the time Gachet came to see Pierre, the child already had undergone the second surgery and was doing better. Renoir again wrote to Murer: ‘Doctor Gachet was, as usual, very kind to us. Please send him our best wishes and tell him things are going better and better…. Aline has to stay inside [with Pierre] all day long. I have to take over a little when I go home.’19 A later letter to Murer states: ‘As for my kid, everything is going well, even though it’s not over because we have to wait for the stitches to fall out by themselves, which takes a long time.’20
Drawing for Nursing Composition with Two Infant Heads, 1886. Sanguine heightened with white chalk on beige prepared canvas, 91.4 × 73.3 cm (36¼ × 28¾ in.). Musée de Strasbourg, France
Throughout this difficult ordeal, Renoir proved a devoted and concerned father, never begrudging his son help despite his financial uncertainty. He showed his love and affection for Pierre constantly. At the bottom of one of his letters to Aline this summer, he made a drawing for his son and wrote: ‘I’m drawing you a little railroad and I’ll see you soon.’21 Although Pierre recovered completely from his operations, Renoir continued to be concerned about his son’s health. Two years later, in December 1889, he wrote to Bérard, who was one of the people cognizant of Pierre: ‘After a month of [Pierre] feeling faint, my kid ended up getting mucous fever.’22 Eleven years later, Renoir would recall Pierre’s second bout with mucous fever, blaming it on coal: ‘Oh, coal. With coal, who needs wars anymore? It kills miners; it kills those who use it and those who travel by it…. In ’89 I had the same problems with Pierre who got mucous fever caused by my (improved) coal stove.’23
At no point did Renoir hesitate to spend money for his son’s health despite the fact that from 1884 through 1888 his finances were in dire straits. While he had done well in the late 1870s thanks to Mme Charpentier and continued to do well in the early 1880s, enabling him to travel, his finances had plummeted by 1884. The effects of the financial crash of 1882 continued to affect both Renoir and his dealer. Even while working on a high-profile commission for four portraits of the children of a senator, Dr Étienne Goujon,24 Renoir aged forty-four despaired of being able to support himself with his work, writing to Aline in late 1885: ‘Dear friend…My portraits aren’t going well and it’s likely that I won’t be able to finish them…. Painting sickens me and I feel like I’m not good at anything any more. Too old, undoubtedly. I think, my poor dear, that it would do you good to get used to my old age, or else. Anyway, I still hope that Montmartre will cure me, although my spirits are quite low. Don’t have my floor painted. I’ve incurred enough expenses since I’m not sure I’ll be able to earn a living. Now we need to think about saving money. Despite all this, I kiss you as much as I am able. Auguste.’25 Despite the letter’s despair, he closed with ‘Auguste’, suggesting intimacy and reminiscent of his earliest letter to Aline, which he had jokingly signed ‘Augustine’, instead o
f his customary ‘Renoir’.
Renoir’s friends were aware of his financial difficulties. To his son Lucien, Pissarro wrote in January 1886: ‘I don’t understand anything any more, Renoir and Sisley are penniless.’26 Seventeen months later, by June 1887, Pissarro again wrote to Lucien: ‘How Sisley and Renoir get by is incomprehensible!’27 While Renoir had previously been able to get through hard times by making portraits, those commissions dried up during this period, almost certainly due to his stylistic change.28 The new Ingrist Impressionist style displeased many who had liked his earlier flattering Realist or Classical Impressionist portraits. These new images were harsh, with their sombre frozen expressions, heavily lidded eyes and exacting linear definition, in some ways resembling, as noted in Chapter 2, Cézanne’s contemporary reviled portraits that appear mask-like and inert.
With the spectre of poverty looming as Renoir worked on his new style, he decided to stop living full-time in Paris, and instead rented homes in the countryside where the cost of living was significantly lower. To save money, he moved his studio within Paris, writing on 18 October 1886 to Bérard: ‘I have moved [my studio] and I am thrilled about it. 1,200 instead of 3,000 francs. I am still waiting for the chimney cleaners.’29 He often went to Aline’s hometown of Essoyes. For his frequent trips to the country, he explained in a letter to Berthe Morisot and her husband, Eugène Manet, early in December 1888: ‘I am currently living the peasant life in Champagne so as to escape the expense of Paris models. I am painting laundresses, or rather washer-women on the banks of the river.’30 Rural life had the added benefit that Renoir’s family was easier to keep hidden. Furthermore, Aline preferred the country to the city, and the restless Renoir was artistically inspired by changing scenery, so they moved often from one rural spot to another.
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