The arthritis also struck at his legs, gradually eroding his mobility. Sometimes he used a cane or crutches to get around; at other times he could not walk at all. From Cagnes in May 1908, André reported to Durand-Ruel: ‘The legs are not doing well at all. He has advanced arthritis and water on the knees. We are obliged to carry him in webbing.’80 A photograph taken around 1909–10 shows André and Renoir’s cook carrying Renoir in a chair on poles. During the next two years, Renoir could walk only rarely and with great pain and difficulty. Other photographs show him using a wheelchair when painting. From February 1905, he had hired a car and driver, explaining to André: ‘I am still very sick. I am working nonetheless, having decided to get a car that is leased monthly since my legs refuse to move. I am actually fairly happy. I am thinking about doing some landscapes that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do (don’t say anything to Durand-Ruel who is against landscapes).’81
At that period, there was only one option for relief. Medicinal spas with hot sulphur springs had been in use since the Roman Empire, using the oldest form of medical treatment, hot- and cold-water therapy. Spa waters could reach 65.5 degrees Celsius (150 Fahrenheit), available in baths, steam showers, rubs and drinks. Since Renoir blamed his worst attacks on the cold weather, it seemed that hot treatments might help. He began experimenting with spa treatments as early as September 1899 and tried six more times over the next decade, visiting Aix, Saint-Laurent and Bourbonne-les-Bains, sometimes for as long as a month. For the first several trips, he went alone with Gabrielle but in 1904, a month in the elegant Bourbonne-les-Bains attracted Aline to visit him with Jean and Coco; it was 117 kilometres (72 miles) east of Essoyes. A month before Renoir went, he wrote: ‘For the past two years I’ve been waiting for hot weather and the result is that I have had a raging attack. I can’t move one finger.’82 A few days after he arrived, Renoir wrote two letters to André, who knew of his aversion to medicinal spas: ‘Since I can no longer move or work, I’ve given in and I’m here to take the thermal baths’, his hotel’s stationery claiming: ‘Bourbonne-les-Bains Grand Hotel of the Thermal Spa facing the public baths and the casino/Telephone/Electrical Lighting/Garage for Automobiles/Telegraphic address: Termalotel’.83 In the second letter he complained: ‘Recently I haven’t been able to sit…. I can’t stand or lie down…. I am going to stay here for about a month.’84
Even though Renoir had little hope that such treatments would help, he knew that they were his only chance at relief. Unlike his wife, he scrupulously followed all the doctor’s orders, as he reported to Jeanne Baudot that August 1904: ‘I’m carefully following my treatment. I have a very considerate doctor who tires me as little as possible…. Up till now…I don’t see any improvement. I cannot work, which makes time drag. Apart from extreme weakness, I am well. I eat quite a bit. I can’t understand why I cannot regain my strength. I’m exhausted…. I can’t remain seated for long because I’m so thin. If I don’t gain weight, I won’t be able to travel. The pain is unbearable.’85 He feared that the treatments would not help or that they might worsen his condition. In 1901, a week into a spa treatment, Renoir wrote to Vollard: ‘I still have three weeks of massages and medicinal baths. I will return either cured or completely exhausted.’86
Most of the time, the treatments simply did not work. After leaving Bourbonne-les-Bains in 1904, Renoir’s paralysis continued to be so bad that he could not paint. He wrote to Julie Manet Rouart, ‘I still don’t see the benefit of these medicinal baths. I have seen loads of people arrive lame and return cured; how annoying to be unlike everybody else. I have to get used to it. I am stuck. It’s going slowly but surely; next year I will be a little worse and so on. I have to get used to it, and that’s all; let’s not talk about it any more.’87 He was even more pessimistic writing to Durand-Ruel: ‘I can hardly move and I really think things are all botched up for painting. I won’t be able to do anything any more. You must understand that under these circumstances, nothing interests me.’88 Renoir feared that this attack marked the end of his ability to paint.
Eventually, however, he was able to work again, and when he did he infused more sensuality into his paintings. As his illness became worse, art became an even more central focus of his life, acting as both medicine and religion. As his medicine, it provided relief from pain; as his religion, it inspired him with hope, which he might otherwise have lost. Seemingly in defiance of his physical condition, in the years 1903–06, Renoir portrayed the most sensual nudes he ever created – idealized nude women who lift their hair to reveal their curvaceous bodies.89 The nudes he painted after his recovery in late 1904 contain a powerful sexuality, something Renoir had probably lost. These voluptuous nudes seem to compensate for his own physical deterioration. His figures grew heavier and more active while he himself became thinner and less mobile. It was heroic that, in the face of endless suffering, Renoir could shed all his personal anguish and remain the positive painter he always had been. Renoir’s nudes of this period returned to the classically inspired tradition of the past’s idealized nudes and heroic figures. They follow his earlier works, such as The Blonde Bather, 1881 (see page 92) and the Large Bathers of 1887 (see page 194).90 Renoir admitted his traditional intentions to Paule Gobillard in 1907: ‘I am continuing to search for the secrets of the masters; it’s a sweet folly in which I am not alone.’91 A year later, one of his close companions, Rivière, reported to Renoir a conversation that he had had with a friend: ‘We talked of you, and the reasons why he likes your painting are the ones that you would give yourself: it’s originality in tradition.’92 In fact, Renoir had all along been practising originality in tradition. Even in his most innovative works of 1868–83, he had incorporated many aspects of the art of the past – for example, in Nude in the Sunlight, 1876, whose posture recalls Greek statues from the fourth century BC.93
Just as in 1881, when Renoir had been inspired by the frescoes of Raphael and the Roman artists at Pompeii, so in the early 1900s he continued to follow the artist who had most inspired him from his youth onwards, the great seventeenth-century Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens. He was enamoured with Rubens’s sensuality, classical themes and minimal pigment. Téodor de Wyzewa wrote in his diary in 1903: ‘[Renoir] told me about the genius of Rubens, of the tremors of delight that one experiences in front of his painting.’94 Renoir also effused about Rubens to the American artist and critic Walter Pach in a series of interviews from 1908 to 1912. In late summer 1910, Renoir went to Munich to paint a portrait and to see the many Rubens paintings in its Pinakothek.95 He told Pach: ‘The work of the painter is so to use colour that, even when it is laid on very thinly, it gives the full result. See the pictures by Rubens in Munich; there is the most glorious fullness and the most beautiful colour, and the layer of paint is very thin.’96 Renoir tried to achieve the fullness he admired in the sculptural quality of his paintings and in his minimal use of paint.
One of the works that exemplifies this fullness is Renoir’s 1908 version97 of the Rubens masterpiece, The Judgment of Paris, a painting that Renoir had admired in 1892 at the Prado in Madrid. The Rubens depicts the Greek myth about the origin of the Trojan War: Paris, a mortal prince, chooses among three beautiful nude goddesses, Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of beauty and love; Athena/Minerva, goddess of wisdom and war; and Hera/Juno, goddess of women, marriage and childbirth and queen of the gods. Unlike Rubens’s Paris, who is in the process of making his choice, Renoir’s is shown giving the golden apple to Aphrodite.98 Renoir, like Paris, chose beauty in his art and love for his many friends. The same year, 1908, Renoir painted other classical, sensual themes such as in Ode to Flowers, which alludes to a poem by the classical Greek poet, Anacreon.99 And in 1909 he portrayed reclining male river gods that call to mind the Parthenon marbles.100
Originality in tradition in his art gave Renoir a sense of artistic community with the artists of the past whom he admired. In a parallel fashion, he needed a personal community of daily companionship and assistance from friends and ser
vants. For Renoir to be able to paint joyfully, he needed to work in the company of others, whether he was painting people, landscapes or still lifes. Since he was increasingly crippled, he could no longer easily visit friends, so he depended on them coming to him. From the south of France, he wrote to Rivière: ‘What I feared was isolation; even with this beautiful sun, it’s still isolation.’101 Around the same time, mid-November 1908, he wrote to another friend: ‘The isolation of my house has made me crazy.’102 To combat this loneliness, Renoir made all his homes welcoming places and encouraged his friends to come for long visits. They either stayed with him or, if Renoir had no unoccupied rooms, they resided in a nearby hotel until a room in his house became available, as shown by his 1903 note to Maleck: ‘the house is full but there are rooms at the Hôtel Savournin close by. But this would only be for a few days. As soon as Pierre and my wife leave, we will have room.’103
In addition to enjoying company, Renoir needed many people to assist him with daily tasks: to help him dress, bathe, eat, prepare his palette and place it on his lap, and place his brush between his rigid fingers. Since he was a chain-smoker, he needed help to light his cigarette, place it between his fingers and take it out when he wanted to paint. He and Aline shared a large staff of employees, some of whom travelled with them while others worked primarily at one residence or another. In July 1908, Renoir wrote to Aline: ‘La Grande Louise wrote and said she was at your disposal. I am writing to Clément that you could arrive on Tuesday. Write to let them know your plans. If you stop in Essoyes on the way, I will meet you there. I send my love to you and the kids.’104 Other servants they shared included maids, washerwomen, laundresses and a chauffeur, Pierre Ricord, nicknamed Baptistin. As we have seen, Renoir’s most dedicated employee was Gabrielle. In addition, sometimes when he travelled south, he took various Paris staff with him to help him get established. For example, Georgette Dupuy, a maid nicknamed La Boulangère because of her baker husband, accompanied Renoir to Cagnes in 1908, but soon returned to work at his Paris apartment where Pierre was then living.105
In order to have space for their increasing staff, family and friends, in 1898, Aline bought the barn next to their Essoyes home so as to combine the two buildings.106 Renovations took a few years to complete. Once completed, the house had a ground floor with a living room, a kitchen and Renoir’s studio. Four bedrooms, including Renoir’s and Aline’s, occupied the next floor. On the top floor were three rooms, of which at least one was a maid’s room. There was running water and flush toilets for which there was a septic tank. They also had a small outhouse in their yard. Renoir later had a two-storey studio constructed in the garden and his house studio was transformed into a dining room.
In 1907, well after the Essoyes renovations were terminated, Aline decided she wanted a fancier apartment in Paris. Since she sensed that her husband might object to the idea, she decided not to tell him her plan, described shortly; rather, she contacted Renoir’s friend and patron, Maurice Gangnat. Gangnat, a brother-in-law of Paul Gallimard, had been a wealthy young man involved in the steel industry until he contracted malaria in 1902, at which time his wife persuaded him to retire and become an art collector. After having bought 12 paintings directly from Renoir in 1905 for 20,000 francs, Gangnat eventually bought about 160 Renoir paintings.107 With many of Renoir’s former patrons having recently died – Marguerite Charpentier in 1904 and Georges Charpentier and Paul Bérard in 1905 – Renoir was happy to have such an avid new collector. In 1906, Renoir painted a portrait of Gangnat’s son, Philippe, aged two.108 Gangnat, knowing Renoir also had a young son, sent Coco a Christmas gift that year. Renoir wrote to him: ‘Dear M. Gangnat; Last night Coco received the magnificent Buffalo Bill toy, which came just at the right moment and was received with extreme happiness. Since my wife is in Paris and since I can’t move, I had only the toys from Cagnes to give him…. Thank you so much for having thought of Coco whom you made very happy.’109 In 1909, Gangnat also commissioned two large works for his dining room: Dancer with Tambourine and Dancer with Castanets.110
During these years as Renoir’s most supportive patron, Gangnat also met Renoir’s wife and family. Hence in 1907 Aline felt able to contact him directly for help in finding the family a new Paris apartment. Gangnat did indeed find an apartment to Aline’s liking, on boulevard Malesherbes in the seventeenth arrondissement in north-west Paris. Then he must have written to Renoir in Cagnes for his approval, whose response has survived: Renoir, knowing nothing of Aline’s intentions, forestalled any deal: ‘Please wait.’111 A few weeks later, Renoir again wrote to Gangnat: ‘It is only now that I realize the inconveniences of this apartment. The landlord will ask me to sign a contract that would imply agreeing to a bourgeois fatherly way of life. I cannot do it because I have an industry of comings and goings of grimy models, crates of canvases, etc. etc. The concierge will be annoyed and the landlord will tell me to leave and we will have to start moving again…. You have to know how to live in your own milieu and I hadn’t thought it through…. Thus tell my wife that the landlord does not want any painters. We will avoid unnecessary letters and useless discussions that way.’112 Just as Aline had gone behind Renoir in arranging this deal, so Renoir circumvented Aline by persuading Gangnat to drop the whole affair without himself confronting his wife. After seventeen years of marriage, this deterioration in communication mirrored the deterioration of trust in their relationship.
Although Renoir prevented Aline from acquiring a fancy apartment in Paris, she and Renoir did agree that they needed a permanent southern residence. After almost a decade of renting houses along the Côte d’Azur, in June 1907 they decided to buy their own home on a nine-acre property in Cagnes called Les Collettes (which means a region of small hills). When he was sixty years old, Coco wrote about the purchase: ‘The decision was rapidly made on 28 June 1907, to buy the property from Mme Armand [for 35,000 francs]. The house was immediately started and was able to be lived in during the autumn of 1908. My mother had won. She was happy. Finally she had a house that suited her. And, what’s more, she had no more cause to envy Mme Deconchy113…and she could even call herself a farmer! My father was less satisfied. This house disappointed him a little. It was too big. It crushed him. He struggled to preserve his reputation as a down-to-earth person. He didn’t want either a “villa” or a “garden”. But for him all of this was secondary; the light was playing in the olive trees.’114
Gabrielle and Jean, 1895. 65 × 54 cm (25⅝ × 21¼ in.). Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris. Bequest of Walter-Guillaume
The Promenade, c. 1905, 164.5 × 129.4 cm (64¾ × 50¼ in.). The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pa.
Ambroise Vollard, 1908. 80.6 × 64.8 cm (31¾ × 25½ in.). Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. Courtaud Collection
Bust of Coco, 1908. Bronze, H. 28 cm (11 in.). The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gift of Sam A. Lewisohn
The Artist’s Son Jean drawing, 1901. 45 × 54.6 cm. (17¾ × 21½ in.). Virginia Museum, Richmond, Va. Gift of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon
Jean Renoir as a Huntsman, 1910. 172.7 × 88.9 cm (68 × 35 in.). Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gift of Jean Renoir and Dido Renoir
Mme Aline Renoir, 1910. 81.3 × 65 cm (32 × 25⅝ in.). The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection
The Saône River throwing Herself into the Arms of the Rhône River, 1915. 102.2 × 84 cm (40¼ × 33⅛ in.). Matsuoka Museum, Tokyo
The Great Bathers, 1919. 110 × 160 cm (43¼ × 63 in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The Judgment of Paris, 1913. 72 × 92 cm (28⅜ × 36¼ in.). Hiroshima Museum of Art
Girl with Mandolin, 1919. 56 × 56 cm (22 × 22 in.). Private collection, New York
The Concert, 1919. 75.6 × 92.7 cm (29¾ × 36½ in.). The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of Ruben Wells Leonard Estate 67ßß
Les Collettes’s estate had many olive trees. Its rustic farmhouse, however, was not adequate for the ailing
Renoir so he and Aline hired architects and builders to create a new house and garden studio.115 During construction, the family lived in a house down the street, and their new villa was completed by mid-November 1908, as Renoir happily informed Durand-Ruel.116 The huge ground floor consisted of a living room, a dining room, an office, a kitchen and three bedrooms. Upstairs were bedrooms for each of the five family members, as well as two indoor studios. Like the renovated Essoyes house, this one had all the modern conveniences of electricity, hot water and bathrooms with flush toilets. Also like Essoyes, it was intended to host many guests: a year later, Rivière wrote from Les Collettes that, besides the Renoirs, there were six or seven others sleeping overnight there.117 By then, Renoir was beginning to prefer country life to city life. Paris’s population tripled from 935,000 in 1841 to 2,888,000 in 1911. The city had become too industrialized for him, with mass-produced automobiles and a public transport system of buses and subways.118 When Schnerb visited him in Paris in June 1909, the young artist noted in his diary: ‘He is going to go to the country. In Paris the commotion makes him dizzy. He is afraid of the cars.’119
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