Renoir spread the news of this joyous occurrence to a number of friends, for example to Murer’s sister, Marie Meunier: ‘Dear Mademoiselle, A strapping baby boy. Everyone is doing fine. Regards, Renoir.’2 The next day, he wrote to Monet: ‘My dear friend, I want you to know that last evening a second son was born who is named Jean and who starts out well in life… Everyone is fine, up until now.’3 Then he informed Morisot: ‘I have a perfectly ridiculous piece of news for you…namely, the arrival of a second son, who is called Jean. Mother and baby are in excellent health so far. Regards to the sweet and charming Julie and to the no less charming mother.’4 Morisot responded: ‘After you deliberate another ten years, my dear Renoir, you will have a girl!’5
Renoir smoking on the steps of his residence at the Château des Brouillards, Montmartre, 1894. Modern print after original, 18.4 × 13 cm (7¼ × 5⅛ in.). Photo by Martial Caillebotte. Private collection
Letter from Renoir to Berthe Morisot Manet, 17 September 1894. Private collection
Renoir, Aline and baby Jean in front of Château des Brouillards, Montmartre 1894. Modern print after original, 20 × 14.6 cm (7¼ × 5⅛ in.) Photo by Martial Caillebotte. Private collection
Jean Renoir was baptized ten months later at Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. Renoir chose his dealer’s youngest son, Georges Durand-Ruel, then aged twenty-eight, to be the godfather. The birth certificate had specified only ‘Jean Renoir’ but on the baptismal certificate his parents added ‘Georges’ after his godfather. For godmother, Renoir and Aline chose Renoir’s student, Jeanne Baudot, then seventeen.6 Through Renoir, Jeanne became a friend of Julie Manet and her cousins Jeanne and Paule Gobillard, all four of whom enjoyed painting and looked up to Renoir for guidance. A few days before the baptism, Renoir had written to the godfather: ‘Dear Mr Georges; Monday at 10.30, 13, rue Girardon, in order to be at the Church of Saint-Pierre of Montmartre at precisely 10.45. Renoir. For the boxes of sugar-coated almonds [traditional gifts for the guests at French baptisms], you take care of it. We don’t need very many. We are doing this baptism without great ceremony. Lunch after leaving the Church around noon in order to wait for Dr Baudot who can’t come earlier.’7
Renoir’s circumstances in 1894 were entirely different from nine years earlier when Pierre had been born. Pierre’s birth was a secret; Jean’s was public. Renoir had been poor; now he was rich. He felt secure in his profession, since for the most part the American and French public were buying his work. Even if he were to develop a new style that became unpopular, Durand-Ruel had scores of earlier canvases to satisfy the market. In 1894, Geffroy wrote an essay noting the dramatic change in Parisians’ appreciation of Renoir’s works between his one-man shows at Durand-Ruel’s of April 1883, when the public reacted with mockery and indifference, and of May 1892, when they reacted to many of the same works with overwhelming acclaim.8 With the change in attitude came enough money for Aline and Renoir to become members of the French upper-middle class, the haute bourgeoisie. They even had enough money to send Pierre, then aged nine, to a fashionable boarding school, the Jesuit-run Sainte-Croix de Neuilly, popular with the sons of rich Parisians.
Two years after Jean’s birth, in May–June 1896, Durand-Ruel put on an exhibition of forty-two canvases by Renoir that garnered much praise from the critics. Another review by Geffroy was particularly effusive, and Renoir thanked him in a humorous and self-deprecating manner: ‘My dear Geffroy, Everyone thinks that your article on my show is superb. As for me, I’m a little ashamed because I find that the review’s acclaim is much better than its cause.’9 His friend the critic Natanson also wrote glowingly.10 One influential critic, Frantz Jourdain, however, gave a scathing review, describing the show as ‘thirty or so distressingly feeble canvases’.11 Nonetheless, Jourdain’s opinion was not enough to affect Renoir’s success.
On Aline, Renoir’s new-found affluence and their marriage had a profound effect. She no longer had to fear her mother’s fate of a disappearing husband; famous Renoir could hardly vanish. Aline’s life had changed dramatically after Jean’s birth, whereas after Pierre’s she had continued her life as a lower-class woman who took care of the baby, modelled for her husband, cooked and performed other duties with minimal outside help. At that time, as described earlier, she was Renoir’s primary model and was depicted in dozens of drawings and paintings that portray the tenderness between her and her infant son. In contrast, by 1894 she had taken up the role of an upper-class Parisian woman, and stopped doing the pedestrian tasks of childcare, modelling and housework. The only humble tasks she still enjoyed were occasional cooking and gardening; her primary job was to manage a growing staff of people who worked for the family. In contrast to his depictions of Aline with baby Pierre, Renoir made no paintings or drawings of Aline alone with baby Jean. The only extant images showing them are two photographs taken the same day by Martial Caillebotte, the artist’s brother.12 One shows a standing Renoir and Aline in front of their Montmartre home as she lifts baby Jean from his carriage (see page 172). The other, taken the same day, shows Aline wearing the same cape and hat, seated in the garden with Jean, and the baby carriage behind. While Aline enjoyed her new role as a well-off woman, it changed her relationship with her husband, who saw himself as a working painter and never felt that he was upper class. Renoir’s primary concern was to be able to paint, which was becoming increasingly difficult because of his worsening health.
Jeanne Baudot, age 16, when she first began studying painting with Renoir, c. 1893. Photographer unknown
In Aline’s new, upper-class life, she hired many people to work for the family. Among them was her distant cousin, Gabrielle Renard, who came from Essoyes to Paris to become Jean’s ‘nursemaid’.13 Gabrielle’s father was the same age as Renoir and her mother was one year younger, so Gabrielle might have seen Renoir in a paternal way. In 1894, she had just turned fifteen, the same age that Aline had been when she had been ousted from her aunt’s house and had come to Paris to join her mother as a seamstress. Renoir was fifty-three years old, thirty-eight years older than Gabrielle, and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. While Gabrielle had been hired for Jean, Renoir soon co-opted her as his primary model, often posing with the infant Jean (see page 241).14 She also posed alone, both clothed and nude, and would continue to do so for eighteen years.
Aline and Jean in the garden of Château des Brouillards, Montmartre, 1894. Modern print after original, 20 × 14.6 cm (7⅞ × 5¾ in.). Photo by Martial Caillebotte. Private collection
Gabrielle, age 15, when she came to work for the Renoirs, 1894. Photographer unknown
Two years after Gabrielle was hired, Renoir painted a large portrait of his family in their rue Girardon garden.15 The work was planned as the centrepiece of Renoir’s 1896 show of forty-two works at Durand-Ruel’s gallery, where it had the title Portraits, later being called The Artist’s Family (see page 198).16 This is the last Renoir painting in which Aline appears with any of her children, and she looks strikingly different from all her previous portrayals. She appears not only upper class, being lavishly dressed, with a huge hat and fur stole, but also haughty, looking away from everyone stiffly and without emotion. In fact, her gaze does not meet the eyes of those in the painting nor those of the artist or viewer. Aline and Jean are the two central figures in the canvas, both round-faced and red-headed, both wearing elaborate headgear. Pierre is dressed in a sailor suit, as was customary for sons of the upper class.17 The young girl at the right may be a neighbour’s daughter or may be standing in for Jeanne Tréhot.18 The fact that a girl appears at all in this family portrait could indicate that Renoir was portraying his own reality, in which his daughter was, as this girl is, separated from everyone else, with her identity hidden.
One sees a striking change between how Renoir portrayed Aline as his model in the 1883 paintings, Dance at Bougival and Country Dance, and how he portrayed her as his wife in this 1896 painting. In the two earlier works, she is radiantly happy, beautiful and active. In this, she is u
nhappy, unattractive and stiff. Renoir’s life story, enriched by his letters, reveals that he saw her differently as his model and as his wife. In those thirteen years between the joyful and the sombre paintings, both Aline and Renoir had changed and their relationship had suffered. Much of the problem arose from their differing aims for status and wealth. While Aline aspired to an upper-class lifestyle, Renoir’s goals were widely different, as Robert L. Herbert has stated: ‘Renoir, an upwardly mobile son of artisans who never forgot his orgins, took pride in his disdain for material things.... Despite the wealth of his later years, he maintined the same patina in his household of plain furnishings and old clothes, whose utter lack of ostentation recalled both his own youth and that of the mythical medieval past.’19
In Renoir’s painting of his family, Gabrielle is the loving adult. She is dressed humbly and crouches below Aline, emphasizing their relative status. Gabrielle gazes tenderly at Jean whom she supports around the waist, as Jean clutches her blouse. She appears relaxed, beautiful and loving, similar to Renoir’s earlier depictions of women in Dance at Bougival and Country Dance, for example (see pages 94–5). In contrast, Renoir’s unflattering portrayal of his wife suggests that their relationship had become more strained, as Aline increasingly demanded an affluent lifestyle that Renoir tried to reject.
While Aline’s identity as Renoir’s wife became known to his friends, whether by her choice or by Renoir’s, she did not participate in Renoir’s social life, as evidenced by an 1897 diary entry of Julie Manet’s: ‘Monsieur Renoir came to dinner, preceded by the two little maids who accompany him on the round of visits on Sundays.’20 Even as Renoir’s relationship with Aline was deteriorating and as he continued to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, he felt the troubles of others: many of his friends and their families were developing their own serious health problems. In December 1893, he responded to a letter from Bérard, whose daughter was ill: ‘I’m very sad that your lovely Marthe [then twenty-three] is in poor health. In Paris, everything isn’t going well either. I am surrounded by sick people. First my friend Maître. It is terrifying. Caillebotte is sick. Bellio etc…. and the sombre weather. I forgot [the composer] Chabrier, who is usually so healthy, who is now in a terrible state. Only Monet is in superb health as always.’21 Out of those Renoir mentioned, only Martha and Maître recovered. Caillebotte, Chabrier and de Bellio died the following year, along with Lhôte. A few years later, Sisley, a good friend in Renoir’s youth, died in 1899, reported by Julie Manet in her diary: ‘Monsieur Renoir is saddened by the death of Sisley, who was his companion when he was young and for whom he has kept a great affection even though he hadn’t seen him since the death of Uncle Edouard [Manet had died in 1883].’22
Caillebotte’s death was especially hard on Renoir. He had been a close friend for more than twenty years and was Pierre’s godfather. On 21 February 1894, a month before Jean was born, Caillebotte died from pulmonary congestion at the age of forty-six. Renoir had been his friend since 1874 and was his executor.23 When it came to administering the estate, Renoir felt uncomfortable telling Monet that Caillebotte had chosen him as executor, since it implied that Renoir was the leader of the Impressionists and not Monet. A few weeks after Caillebotte died, Renoir wrote to Monet: ‘At first I was a little embarrassed and wanted to talk with you but now it is useless. The will is very clear and I must follow it exactly.’24 Caillebotte had also wanted Renoir to ensure that his companion, Charlotte, receive the house in which they had lived together. Although Caillebotte had never married her, he wrote in his will: ‘In addition, I leave the little house that I own in Petit Gennevilliers to Miss Charlotte Berthier.’25
The other major task that Caillebotte left to Renoir was the distribution of his private art collection. Although Renoir had been Caillebotte’s best friend, Caillebotte’s art collection did not favour Renoir over their artist friends. Over the years, Caillebotte had purchased nearly seventy works, many of them important masterpieces (see Chapter 1). Initially, Caillebotte bought pieces from the Impressionist sales and exhibitions to help his fellow artists monetarily, but soon he was purchasing works with the intention of giving them to the French state, as specified in his will. There he had listed the artists he intended to include; all were represented in his final collection except for Morisot.26 Perhaps he did not purchase her works because she, out of all the artists he collected, was the most financially secure and did not need his help.
Despite his foresight in providing for his Impressionist friends, Caillebotte did not mention his own works in his will. The generous Renoir was worried that works by Caillebotte might never go to the Louvre. In that same letter to Monet, Renoir continued: ‘I’m getting back the Rowers to try to get it accepted by the Luxembourg. I think that it’s Caillebotte’s most typical painting.’ In addition to getting Caillebotte’s works accepted by the French government, Renoir wanted to preserve Caillebotte’s legacy by putting on an exhibition of his art. He continued to Monet: ‘I want to make arrangements with you for his exhibition.... I have rented a studio by the month at 11 boulevard de Clichy to house the collection and meet with the commission.’27 The two artists assisted Durand-Ruel in planning the Caillebotte retrospective, held on 4–16 June 1894, shortly after Caillebotte’s death, at Durand-Ruel’s gallery.28
It took three years of meetings between Renoir and members of the government commission assigned to accept or reject Caillebotte’s bequest to evaluate each piece. Several influential members of the artistic community as well as the general public were appalled that the government was considering accepting any of these paintings and drawings. The renowned artist Jean-Léon Gérôme called the bequest ‘a pile of shit’. A similar evaluation was expressed in a readers’ survey conducted by The Artist journal: the Caillebotte bequest was considered ‘a pile of excrement whose exhibition in a national museum publicly dishonours French art’.29 The state finally agreed to take forty works including Caillebotte’s Rowers, even though his will had specified that the Louvre must take all or none. Renoir, after consulting with Caillebotte’s brother, agreed to accept the state’s position. The commission rejected the other paintings and pastels. Today the accepted works are among the treasures of the Musée d’Orsay, the branch of the Louvre devoted to nineteenth-century art.
One of Renoir’s great solaces after Caillebotte’s death in February 1894 was his increasing closeness to Morisot. As he had helped her through her husband’s death in 1892, now Morisot helped Renoir cope with the loss of Caillebotte. Renoir’s greatest involvement in the lives of Morisot and her daughter coincided with Julie (born in 1878) beginning her diary, which spanned the years 1893–99. Julie often wrote about her mother’s life, such as this entry from March 1894: ‘In the evening, Maman had people over for dinner – Monsieur Degas, Monsieur Mallarmé, Monsieur Renoir, Monsieur Bartholomé; Paule and Jeannie were also guests.’30 Paule (born in 1869) and Jeannie (born in 1877) Gobillard were the orphaned daughters of Morisot’s sister, Yves Gobillard (she had also left a son, Marcel, born in 1872). Following Yves’s death in 1893, Morisot invited the two girls to live with them at their home at 40 rue de Villejust (now rue Paul Valéry) in the sixteenth arrondissement. Julie loved her cousins, and the three of them remained close for the rest of their lives.
Although Renoir knew and liked the cousins, his first allegiance was to Morisot and Julie. In January 1894, he wrote to Morisot suggesting that he do a portrait of her with Julie: ‘If you are willing to give me two hours, that is, two mornings or afternoons a week, I think I can do the portrait in six sessions at the most.’31 In the portrait, Morisot, by then fifty-three, looks old and tired. A mourning widow, she is portrayed in profile, dressed in black, which contrasts with her white hair; Julie sits on the arm of her mother’s chair, looking at the viewer with an anxious expression.32 They sat for Renoir at his rue Tourlaque studio; sometimes after a painting session, he took them to his home, where Aline made them lunch (see page 180).33
In March, Renoir invi
ted them for dinner: ‘Mallarmé will give me the pleasure of coming to dinner in Montmartre next Wednesday. If the climb in the evening is not too arduous for you, I thought that he would like to meet you there. Durand-Ruel will come, and I am going to write to the above-mentioned poet to invite [Henri] de Régnier for me. P.S. I am not mentioning sweet and lovable Julie: that is of course taken for granted, and I think that Mallarmé will bring his daughter [Geneviève].’34
Less than a year later, in late February 1895, Julie came down with influenza. As she was recovering, Morisot contracted the disease. Within a few days, she was dead. At the time, ’flu was a common cause of death, and Morisot had a heart weakened by rheumatic fever as a child. On the day that she died, 2 March, Renoir was painting with Cézanne at Jas de Bouffan, near Aix. Immediately he learnt the news, he boarded a train and, once arrived in Paris, went to see Julie. In old age, in 1961, Julie recalled this visit: ‘I have never forgotten the way he arrived in my room in the rue Weber and held me close to him; I can still see his white Lavallière cravat with its little red dots.’35 Renoir was shattered by Morisot’s death, a great loss to him, which happened about a year after Caillebotte had died. The day after Morisot died, Renoir took it upon himself to inform their friends. Since Monet was painting in Norway, he notified the painter’s wife, Alice: ‘I am sorry to have to tell you very sad news. Our good friend Madame Berthe Manet died yesterday evening. I am still shaken by this unexpected event…. We will bury her Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., I think. There won’t be an announcement since she only wanted her friends at her burial.’36 And to Pissarro: ‘My dear Pissarro. I have the deep sadness to tell you of the death of our good friend Berthe Manet. We will take her to her final resting place Tuesday morning at 10. Renoir, March 3, 1895.’37 The funeral was on 5 March 1895.
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