Renoir

by Barbara Ehrlich White

  Even though he disdained being in the spotlight, Renoir made an effort to find out what was said about his art, subscribing to two newspaper services. In 1904, they sent him 59 reviews of exhibitions from Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. Between 1901 and 1910, Renoir’s paintings were shown in 29 exhibitions around the Western world, of which 8 took place in France (4 at Bernheim’s gallery and 4 at Durand-Ruel’s), 8 in Germany, 2 in the United States, 4 in Britain, 3 in Belgium, 1 in Switzerland and 3 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All these exhibitions were group shows, except for Durand-Ruel’s in Paris in 1902.46

  Renoir, a leader of the Impressionists and, therefore, an artistic revolutionary, had always been worried that newspaper critics would portray him as a political revolutionary as well; he feared being considered in the same category as the anarchist Pissarro. At last, in October 1904, at the opening of the Salon d’Automne (which had replaced the May Salon of earlier years), an interview was published in La Liberté that refuted this false image of Renoir. The journalist, C. L. de Moncade, began: ‘I have been to see the painter Renoir, and I confess that my first impression was one of complete stupefaction. I thought I was going to meet an ardent, impetuous man, pacing feverishly the width and length of his studio, delivering indictments, demolishing established reputations, vindictive, if not full of hatred, in short, an intransigent revolutionary.’ Yet, Moncade discovered, ‘He is a sweet old man, with a long white beard, a thin face, very calm, very tranquil, with a husky voice, a good-hearted manner, who welcomes me with the most amiable cordiality.’ Renoir, too, did his best to dispel his reputation as a political revolutionary: ‘You see…my existence was exactly the opposite of what it should have been, and it’s certainly the most comical thing in the world that I am depicted as a revolutionary, because I am the worst old fogey there is among the painters.’47 Indeed, by 1904, Renoir had not only accepted the official government award of the Légion d’Honneur but was also painting in a more conservative style than he had in the 1870s, and was included in a series of photographs of notable Parisians called Nos contemporains chez eux (Our Contemporaries at Home; see page 229).

  Renoir’s exhibit at the 1904 Salon, which included masterpieces such as Luncheon of the Boating Party and On the Terrace,48 got superlative reviews, but the artist still could not believe that the critics and public would continue to appreciate his works. Despite his success, he went on seeing the Salon as a humbling experience, as he told Moncade in the same interview: ‘Certainly I’m in favour of Salons, they’re an excellent lesson in painting. One thinks one has a marvel which is going to bowl everyone over. In the studio, it’s enormously effective, it receives much acclaim, and your friends come and pronounce it a masterpiece. Once in the Salon among the other canvases, it’s not at all the same thing any more, and it doesn’t bowl anyone over. So it’s also a lesson in modesty.’49 Five years later, after continuing positive acclaim, when asked if he would exhibit again at that year’s Salon, Renoir answered: ‘What do you want? When I exhibit, I get yelled at.’50 After twenty-five years of mockery, Renoir could not believe that the public would continue to appreciate his art.

  Auguste Renoir, Painter, 63 years old, 1904. 11.5 × 17 cm (4⅝ × 6¾ in.). Photo by Dornac (Our Contemporaries at Home series). Bibliothèque Nationale, Dept. des Estampes et de la Photographie

  The market value of his art nevertheless continued to rise. Quickly mounting prices for his works prompted feelings of disgust in Renoir. He thought of himself as a serious craftsman and was displeased that the prices had become exorbitant. In late April 1903, a month after a sale in Paris,51 Renoir complained to Jeanne Baudot: ‘My dear Jeanne…. I am disgusted by painting; these high, ridiculous prices have crazed everyone and everyone is selling, even my friend Bérard, multi-millionaire. Here’s the result the Bernheims, who will surely kill the chicken that lays the golden eggs, were looking for. I don’t care, but it disgusts me.’52 The Bernheims were trying to sell Renoir’s paintings at increasingly elevated rates. For example, in 1907 an article in the British scholarly journal, The Burlington Magazine, by the art historian Léonce Bénédite, discussed this phenomenon: ‘The Metropolitan Museum of New York made last spring an acquisition which may be termed sensational: it purchased the Portrait of Madame Charpentier [Mme Charpentier and her Children (see page 91)] by Auguste Renoir for the sum of 92,000 francs [in fact, 84,000 plus tax, totalling 92,400 francs]. Whatever may have been the recent rise in the prices of the productions of the so-called “Impressionist” school, this is an enormous figure for a modern work by a living artist.’ That sum was double the previous highest price received for an Impressionist painting, and more than sixty-one times what the Charpentiers had paid for the painting twenty-nine years earlier. Bénédite linked the high value to the importance of the artist who, he wrote, ‘will remain one of the most original masters of the French school in the second half of the nineteenth century’.53 Despite these enthusiastic articles by both reviewers and scholars, Renoir continued to worry that his success was only temporary.

  Renoir also had difficulty placing a value on his work that corresponded to the market. Durand-Ruel had to urge him to revalue the insurance on the pieces Renoir kept in his various studios and residences since theft of such valuable objects was a distinct possibility. As early as 1901, Georges Durand-Ruel was writing to him: ‘Like my father, I find that your paintings are not insured for an adequate sum. You must not only augment the total worth of your paintings, which is now 20,000 francs for the contents of each studio, but you must also increase the maximum indemnity to be paid for the loss of an individual painting which is now 3,000 francs. I don’t know for how much [you have insured] the paintings at your house; you’ll have to determine that yourself, but as for the maximum sum to be paid for each painting, it must at least be raised to 10,000 francs and maybe up to 15,000 to have a larger margin for your large family portrait [The Artist’s Family; see page 198] and for any other important painting that you could have.’54 This would have meant an increase in insurance value of three times for most works and five times for the largest canvases.

  There was another kind of theft: forgery. Renoir’s work was now so popular and valuable that forgeries abounded. In March 1903, Renoir and Durand-Ruel became aware of forgeries being sold by a Parisian dealer, Barthélémy. Durand-Ruel worried that the forgeries would bring down the prices of Renoir’s authentic work: ‘My dear Renoir… I abhor just as you do what is going on at Barthélémy’s with your paintings…. They are selling cheap what doesn’t cost them a thing and prevents serious business. We cannot sell your paintings at a loss…these forger/dealers say we sell them for much too much.’ Nevertheless, Durand-Ruel did not see any way to stop the problem: ‘Be without illusions as I try to be. We are obviously living among rascals…. It’s a collective fate.’55 Renoir for his part suspected that his rue Caulaincourt studio neighbour, Léon Fauché, was involved not only in creating these forgeries but also in stealing paintings from his studio.56 Renoir was especially upset since he had trusted Fauché not merely with the key to his studio but in dealings with his son Pierre. Once Renoir suspected Fauché to be involved with the forgeries, he wrote to Jeanne Baudot in February 1903: ‘I would like to close this letter by thanking you for the entertainment you provide for Pierre. Knowing that he spends less time at Monsieur Fauché’s makes me feel better about not being in Paris.’57

  Even respectable collectors wound up with fakes among their authentic works. Again in 1903, the dentist Dr Georges Viau, who had one of the largest collections of Renoir’s paintings (including authentic works bought from Murer in 1896), was tricked in this way. Renoir was clear when explaining to André in December how he knew that forgers were involved: ‘The paintings that are from my studio are never signed or rarely, but I never sign sketches. Thus, the sketches at Viau’s have false signatures and are not my works.’58 While Durand-Ruel had previously been passive, once they began to discover forgeries
within important collections, the dealer felt that something had to be done: ‘It is absolutely necessary to stop this traffic [in forgeries] which is becoming intolerable and would bring enormous damage to our common interest as well as to your reputation…. There is an enormous commerce in these false paintings which those rascals sometimes sell for more money than the real ones. You must do everything possible to stop this traffic which is not only of questionable value but very harmful to all of us.’59

  Back in March 1903, Renoir had decided to turn the tables on the perpetrators, as he explained to André: ‘I haven’t done anything to deserve this, believe me. Nonetheless, when I’m in Paris, I will think about a way to cause a little trouble for Sir Barthélémy.’60 Contrary to Renoir’s usual practice of avoiding confrontation, he decided to sue Barthélémy and Fauché. Early in 1904, Renoir registered a formal complaint, but on the advice of a lawyer, he withdrew the charge the following month since he was told it would be ineffective. As he explained to Durand-Ruel: ‘I consulted with a highly esteemed lawyer for a long time; he advised me not to send the second complaint…. There’s a forger, we must attack him squarely, so it’s up to the police to punish him severely or to make him come and give him a reprimand…. As for the [false] pastels, Viau hasn’t the right to keep them. What’s more, the lawyer thinks that the commotion about the fake paintings does more harm than good and that it does nothing but scare off collectors.’61 Unfortunately, whatever actions Renoir took proved insufficient. Three years later, when Viau’s collection went up for sale, it still included some of the problematic works obtained through Barthélémy. Nonetheless, Renoir’s paintings continued to gain in popularity and value. Since forged paintings with Renoir’s signatures continued to appear on the art market, Durand-Ruel continued photographing those works by Renoir that he purchased – a practice he had begun in the early 1890s. Vollard did the same and even had Renoir sign the photographs.62

  Forgeries and high prices were not the only worries; he also feared alienating the public by overexposure of his art. As he wrote to Durand-Ruel in March 1902: ‘Restrained shows with few canvases have, in my opinion, a greater impact. I think that exhibitions that are too large give the idea that the figures were made too easily. That takes away their feeling of rarity…it looks like painters lay paintings like eggs.’63 Two years later, he reiterated his concerns when invited to the 1904 Salon d’Automne. Three weeks before the event, he pleaded with Durand-Ruel: ‘Please don’t put too many things in this exhibit. Rarity gives more value than abundance.’64 Durand-Ruel sent thirty-five paintings (eighteen from his stock), which were displayed in a separate Renoir room. A month later, during his interview, Moncade asked: ‘And now, will you exhibit regularly?’ Renoir answered: ‘I don’t know, really…. Truthfully, I’m a little tired of sending things. And then, what do you want me to say? This Salon d’Automne seems fairly useless to me…. But there are really too many exhibitions and it seems to me quite sufficient to bother the public once a year.’65

  Durand-Ruel nevertheless frequently exhibited Renoir’s works. From 1902 through 1909, the dealer put on a series of yearly Renoir exhibitions, never with less than twenty-two paintings and drawings.66 Perhaps he felt compelled to protect his claim to Renoir’s art since, in 1900, Alexandre Bernheim had mounted a Renoir show with sixty-eight works, as described in Chapter 4.67 Nine years later, when Bernheim wanted to put on another Renoir exhibition, Renoir expressed the same fears that he had voiced earlier to Durand-Ruel: ‘My dear M. Bernheim, You know what it is to be popular – it always starts well and always ends badly. Which means that if you show my paintings too often, people will quickly have had enough of them…. In fact, you would really give me great pleasure if you dropped the idea of this exhibition altogether. R.’68 Unlike Durand-Ruel, Bernheim had neither the leverage nor the collection to flout Renoir’s wishes; he postponed his idea for a big Renoir show for four years until 1913.

  Since 1872, Durand-Ruel had been Renoir’s primary dealer, although Renoir had always felt free to sell directly to friends and patrons. He had always been close to Durand-Ruel personally, and at first the artist felt guilty when he sold pieces to any other dealer. In April 1901, he sheepishly admitted to his dealer: ‘I had the weakness to be unfaithful to you a few times with [the priest and collector] l’Abbé even though I gave him what you refused and found horrible, which is, by the way, true. But if I only sold good things I’d die of hunger…. Please excuse my weaknesses.’69 As usual, when Renoir thought he might be in trouble with a friend, he wrote pre-emptively with overly dramatic excuses. A few days later, Durand-Ruel wrote back: ‘You wrote me that I refused to take the paintings that you sold to l’Abbé Gauguin. Where did you get that idea? Never in my life would I have refused to take them, especially because they are very beautiful.’70

  Yet despite Durand-Ruel’s possessiveness, Renoir had become friendly with Bernheim in 1898, as shown by several letters, so it was no surprise when he later began selling works to that dealer.71 Durand-Ruel knew that he could not prevent Renoir from selling to other dealers, as many of the other Impressionists did, but in 1903, he pressed Renoir to be faithful: ‘Keep on working well and make me a lot of nice things without worrying yourself.’72 Five years later, in December 1908, he tried to intimidate Renoir out of dealing with the Bernheims: ‘My dear Renoir, I have just had a painful surprise which I certainly wasn’t expecting and wish to let you know. The Bernheims have just succeeded by a series of underhand manoeuvres, which started a while back, to convince Monet to sign a contract for the series of Venice landscapes….. I do not understand Monet, but I will not reproach him. He certainly has been duped and as I didn’t doubt he would give in to the Bernheims’ temptations…I am writing all of this confidentially to alleviate my heart; don’t say a word when you see them and don’t speak to anyone about this. They will come to visit you one of these days because they are leaving for the Midi tomorrow. Be wary of them and of their lovely words… I mistrust them… Well that’s enough of this subject but I was trying to give you a few details to guide you…. They are merchants whom conscience does not bother. Monet will realize it pretty soon if he keeps listening to them.’73 Here Durand-Ruel was talking down to Renoir, ten years his junior. If Renoir had been an anti-Semite, Durand-Ruel’s reasoning might have convinced him not to deal with the Bernheims. But Renoir was not an anti-Semite. Durand-Ruel’s warning failed to convince Renoir, who continued to exhibit and be friendly with the Bernheims. Furthermore, he made it clear to Durand-Ruel that he would continue that business and personal relationship with the Bernheims.

  Renoir disliked being treated in this fashion and wrote back at once: ‘My dear Durand-Ruel, All that you tell me surprises me so much that I have a hard time believing it. As for me, a mediocre businessman, do not think that I will sell my independence to anyone. It is the only thing that I hold dearly: the right to do foolish things. To let things happen and to know how to wait, that is the motto of the wise man. Regards, Renoir.’ For the normally conformist Renoir, this was an extremely confrontational response. Durand-Ruel’s tone must have truly angered him. He added in a postscript: ‘What makes me sad is seeing you waste your good health on useless things you can’t avoid. It is very annoying that you are old. I would have said, “Come visit for a while”, but I wouldn’t want to tire you. Send Georges.’74 For Renoir who always craved company to tell his old friend not to visit shows how upset the artist had become over this incident. Nevertheless, they eventually resumed a good relationship and, by January 1911, Renoir was happy to host Durand-Ruel and his companion Prudence for two weeks at his home in Cagnes.75

  That Renoir had the energy and confidence to stand up to his dealer is impressive since his health was quickly deteriorating. By 1908, at the age of sixty-seven, Renoir had outlived most of his Impressionist colleagues; his only remaining fellow artists were Cassatt, Degas and Monet, all of whom were having trouble with their eyes. While Renoir’s eyes were not failing, his bones
and joints were. He had no teeth and ate mashed or liquefied food, often sipped through a straw. And he was frail and thin, his rheumatoid arthritis wreaking havoc on his body. He experienced episodes of pain that essentially paralysed him; when the remission came, it left him in a progressively worse condition. His mobility and manual dexterity were severely impeded by ever more contorted and rigid joints. Extreme thinness for his height of 169 centimetres (5 ft 6½) also caused problems, as he explained to his dealer in 1904: ‘What bothers me most at the moment is that I cannot stay seated because of my thinness, 97 pounds [44 kilos].… The bones pierce the skin and quite soon, I cannot remain seated. But I nonetheless have a good appetite. Let’s hope I end up gaining some weight.’76 It is ironic that Renoir should have struggled to gain weight when his wife struggled to lose it.

  The loss of dexterity in his hands posed his biggest problem. In 1901, the painter Odilon Redon visited him and described with sympathy: ‘I saw him suffering great pains and so handsome in his noble dignity!…[there is] something in the sound of his voice where I noticed all his exquisite sensitivity…[which I noticed] while holding his sick and beautiful hand.’77 Two years later, Renoir wrote to his old friend Bérard: ‘I write poorly. I have horrible pain in my hands.’78 Holding a pen became so arduous that his handwriting became increasingly illegible, so sometimes he dictated his letters as when one of his maids wrote: ‘as you know, he has lots of difficulty writing with his sickly hands and he asked me to write for him’.79 Nonetheless, for the rest of his life, Renoir persisted in writing and painting whenever he could (see pages 322–3).