Chapter 6
1910–15
Renoir aged 69–74;
Dismissal of Gabrielle,
Outbreak of War,
Death of Aline
Around 1910, Renoir painted a number of portraits of himself, his wife and their sons. His sudden desire to preserve the images of himself and his family might well reflect his fears about his mortality in the face of his worsening arthritis. Clearly, these family portraits had sentimental value for him, since Renoir kept all but one (Profile Self-Portrait) in his studio until his death.1
Renoir based his portraits of Aline, Jean and Coco on the canonical art of the past that he admired in museums. The first of these, done in 1909, was a large portrait of Coco, then aged eight, in the pose and costume of Watteau’s The Clown Gilles (c. 1715–21, Paris, Louvre).2 Next, in 1910, in an even larger size, Renoir portrayed Jean at sixteen as a hunter (see page 245).3 This canvas is the same height as The Artist’s Family, 1896 (see page 198), but not as wide. Jean’s regal posture with his rifle and hound, Bob, are a reference to Velázquez’s Prince Baltasar Carlos in Hunting Dress (1635–36, Madrid, Prado).4 In 1910, Renoir also made the first significant portrayal of Aline (see page 245) since The Artist’s Family fourteen years earlier.5 He painted her in the pose of a frescoed Greek mother-earth figure, Arcadia (2nd century BC), from the Basilica at Herculaneum.6 The portrait realistically conveys Aline’s prematurely aged appearance and portliness (the latter highlighted by their small puppy), which are confirmed by a photograph of the time with Renoir and Coco.7 Renoir also made two oil sketches of Aline sewing.8
In contrast with his paintings of Coco, Jean and Aline that each refer to a famous painting from the past, Renoir’s 1910 portrait of Pierre at twenty-five is a simple bust. Interestingly, it is strikingly similar in pose and size to Renoir’s self-portrait from the same year.9 However, while Pierre’s portrait is idealized, Renoir’s self-portrait captures an acceptance and acknowledgment of his situation, also seen in the photograph with Aline and Coco just mentioned. That same year, Renoir painted another self-portrait, in profile.10
Renoir, Coco and Aline, Essoyes, 1912. Photographer unknown. University of California, Los Angeles, Art Library Special Collection, Jean Renoir Collection
By 1912, Renoir’s health was so fragile that it is easy to see why he might have been feeling his mortality. He weighed only 44 kilos (97 pounds, less than 6 stone), and had difficulty eating because of a dry mouth from his illness and the fact that his teeth had been removed. He could barely sleep, as he complained to Renée Rivière: ‘Unfortunately my rheumatism makes me suffer constantly. Every night I have feet like an elephant.’11 In fact, by 1912, Renoir’s legs had become too weak to support the weight of his thin body. The Bernheims, in one last attempt to save Renoir’s mobility, found a Viennese doctor whom they brought to Paris in order to treat him. The doctor put him on a strengthening diet for a month. When the doctor returned to test Renoir’s walking, the painter was able to take a few steps on his own, with tremendous effort. He decided that the great effort required to walk would drain the energy he needed to paint, concluding that he would prefer to paint.12 Around that time, he wrote to Rivière: ‘I have lost my legs. I am unable to get up, sit down, or take a step without being helped. Is it for ever?? That’s it. I sleep badly, tired out by my bones, which tire the skin. That’s how skinny I am.’13
Those closest to him reflected the gravity of his worry. Gabrielle had been with Renoir for eighteen years as a caring companion and model. In June 1912, she wrote to Vollard: ‘The boss can no longer move on his own; he is completely debilitated in his legs and arms. His hole is healing well and there is barely anything left. This hole has really bothered us.’14 That ‘hole’ was the result of a rheumatoid nodule, a mass of tissue under the skin, probably an ulcer on his buttock, which broke down with the pressure of sitting and later became ulcerated, causing an open sore. As noted before, the only commercial medicine then available was Aspirin, the successor to salicylic acid, which Renoir would not have liked since it caused severe indigestion; indeed, most people refused to stay on it.
A stroke Renoir suffered in the spring of 1912 decreased his mobility even further, leaving him unable to move his arms as well as his legs for a few days. In June 1912, Aline wrote to Durand-Ruel: ‘My husband is doing a little better. He is beginning to be able to move his arms, his legs are still the same. It is impossible for him to stand on them, but he is a lot less discouraged despite that. He is getting used to his immobility. It is really sad to see him in this state.’15 And three days later: ‘My husband is doing better. He’s been working [painting] in the garden for ten days now. It’s very hot. It’s done him a world of good. He still can’t walk, but painting still interests him more and more.’16 Since holding a pen was harder for Renoir than holding a paintbrush, sometimes Gabrielle wrote letters on his behalf, such as the five letters she wrote from Renoir to the Bernheims around 1911–13.17
Just as he had in 1905, Renoir decided to compensate for his lack of mobility by renting a car. In February 1911, even before his legs failed entirely, he wrote to his dealer: ‘I am going to rent a car for a month.’18 The next month, Renoir and Aline visited the car and bicycle shop of her cousin. Aline wrote to Durand-Ruel: ‘Renoir saw several cars which didn’t suit him. It’s for that reason he’s ordered a car in which he’ll feel like he’s in a living room. I hope that he will be satisfied with it because it’s a very big expense, but he has the right to treat himself, even to an expensive whim.’19 In May 1913, how Renoir could travel from Cagnes to Paris was still an issue, as Cassatt in Grasse, near Renoir in the south, explained to her New York friend, Louisine Havemeyer: ‘It is a problem how to get him to Paris, but they are going in an auto and will take eight days to do it.’20 Automobile travel had become necessary since Renoir could no longer take the train, as a letter to Durand-Ruel from Aline five months later confirms: ‘My husband put up with the car very easily. He finds it more agreeable than the train.’21 This worked out so well that Renoir eventually hired a chauffeur, Baptistin.22 Owning an automobile in 1913 was rare: in 1911, only 64,000 vehicles were registered in France.23
Renoir’s declining health necessitated that the family once again move their Paris residence. In the new apartment, at 57 bis24 boulevard Rochechouart in the ninth arrondissement, the artist could be wheeled between home and studio, which were on the same floor. In 1911, the family also rented an apartment with a studio in Nice, just over 12 kilometres (8 miles) from Les Collettes, so that Renoir could be close to his doctors. This corner residence was on the third floor at 1 place de l’Église-du-Voeu and 1 rue Palermo (now rue Alfred Mortier). It was rented from the Roumieux-Faraut family. Renoir made frequent trips back and forth between Cagnes and Nice, as did Aline, of whom Renoir related: ‘My wife will shuttle between Cagnes and Nice.’25 As Renoir explained in November 1911, he needed frequent treatments for rheumatoid nodules: ‘The role of the surgeon consists of getting rid of my growths. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a long and bothersome process.’ Despite the obvious benefit of being near his doctors, when explaining why they were renting in Nice, Renoir wrote in the same letter: ‘I had to rent an apartment in Nice so that the children can get to school more easily.’26 Jean, by then seventeen, and Coco aged ten were attending the Lycée Masséna, within walking distance of their apartment (though most of Coco’s education came from private tutors). Additionally, Renoir found Nice more enjoyable than Les Collettes. He told André: ‘I am very happy in this apartment in Nice. I feel less abandoned than in Les Collettes, where I feel like I’m in a convent.’27 Nice was ‘more lively’ than Cagnes, and another benefit was that it was much easier to find models there than in the countryside, as he wrote: ‘I hope to find models without having them come from Paris.’28
The fact that Renoir was still painting even in his pitiful condition was a subject of much amazement to his friends. In December 1912, when Renoir was seventy-one, Durand-Ruel, ten y
ears older, visited and reported: ‘Renoir is in the same sad condition, but his strength of character is still amazing. He is unable to walk or even to get up from his armchair. He has to be carried everywhere by two people. What torture! And, despite that, he is still in a good mood and is still happy when he can paint. He has already done several things, and yesterday during the day he painted a whole torso that he began in the morning. Sketchy but superb.’29
Renoir in Nice, 1913. Gelatin-silver print, 8 × 8.26 cm (3⅛ × 3¼ in.). Photo by Konrad Ferdinand Edmund von Freyhold. Collection Roland Stark
Two months later, Cassatt, then sixty-nine, visited Renoir, reporting to Louisine Havemeyer: ‘It does one good to see his courage.’30 A few months later, she wrote again to her friend: ‘[Renoir] really is to be admired, such courage! And such a helpless cripple, and sufferer. What a blessing that he can paint all the time, and that he is persuaded that what he does now is better than anything that he did before.’31
In November and December 1913, and again in April and May 1914, the German painter Konrad Ferdinand Edmund von Freyhold (1878–1944) visited Renoir both in his Nice apartment and at Les Collettes while he stayed at Hotel Savournin in Cagnes. Von Freyhold had been commissioned by a Swiss collector, Theodor Reinhart, to purchase two works from Renoir, which he accomplished.32 He also took many photographs of Renoir and his family, for one of which Renoir, uncharacteristically, removed his hat, revealing his bald head; another shows Renoir painting the 1914 Seated Bather (see pages 278–79).33
Renoir was not the only Impressionist suffering from ill health. By this point, 1913, only Cassatt, Degas and Monet were alive, of whom Degas, then aged seventy-nine, was in poor shape – Cassatt reported to Havemeyer: ‘Degas [is] a mere wreck.’34 A year later, Joseph Durand-Ruel relayed to Renoir: ‘I recently saw Degas. Talking with him is not an easy thing, for he can barely see anything and doesn’t hear much…. Miss Cassatt had [cataract] operations on her two eyes.’35
Monet, in contrast, was in relatively good health, but deep in mourning for his wife, Alice Hoschedé, who had died in May 1911. He and Renoir remained good friends and saw each other about once a year. Three months after Alice’s death, on 27 August 1911, Renoir and Gabrielle went to Giverny to console Monet. The day before, Gabrielle wrote to Vollard: ‘Tomorrow, Sunday, Durand-Ruel’s car will pick us up to go to visit his friend Monet. He is still crying over his wife’s death on the banks of his pond. We are going to try to console the poor man.’ She explained that Mme Renoir was at the spa in Vichy with her car and chauffeur.36 The day after their visit, Monet wrote to Bernheim-Jeune: ‘Renoir came to see me yesterday which made me very happy. He is always valiant in spite of his sad condition, while I’m losing hope even though I’m the healthy one.’37 Monet was concerned about Renoir’s health and kept track of him through Alice’s daughter, Germaine Salerou, who was Renoir’s neighbour in Cagnes, as well as through the Durand-Ruels, to whom Monet wrote in June 1913: ‘I was told that Renoir is not well; please let me know how he is. I am counting on you, you know, and if you see him, send him my best.’38
Seated Bather, 1914. 81.1 × 67.2 cm (31⅞ × 26⅞ in.). The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Annie Swan Coburn to the Mr and Mrs Lewis I. Coburn Memorial Collection
In spite of or perhaps even because of Renoir’s debilitated condition, several art critics stated that his art was improving. Their opinions could have been inflated because of the pathetic contrast between the sickly artist and his joyful works. The Parisian critic and poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘the main impresario of the avant-garde’, wrote in 1912, when Monet, Matisse and Picasso were also highly esteemed: ‘the aged Renoir, the greatest painter of our time and one of the greatest painters of all times, is spending his last days painting wonderful and voluptuous nudes that will be the delight of times to come’.39 Even two years later, Apollinaire’s praise had not dimmed: ‘Renoir [is] the greatest living painter, whose least production is hungrily awaited by a whole legion of dealers and collectors.’40 Similarly laudatory, Walter Pach, a young American critic, helped by Gertrude Stein, interviewed Renoir four times from 1908 onwards. His 1912 Scribner’s Magazine interview began: ‘To have attained the famous three-score years and ten, and be producing work which surpasses that of his youth and middle age, to have seen the public change its attitude from hostility to homage, to be one of the best-loved of living painters: such is the lot of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.’41
Renoir in Nice or Cagnes working on Seated Bather, 1913–1914. Gelatin-silver print, 8 × 8.26 cm (3⅛ × 3¾ in.). Photo by Konrad Ferdinand Edmund von Freyhold. Private collection
Renoir in Nices or Cagnes pausing while working on Seated Bather, 1913–14. Gelatin-silver print, 8 × 8. 26 cm (3⅛ × 3¼ in.). Photo by Konrad Ferdinand von Freyhold. Private collection
Renoir’s popularity rocketed during his later years, not only among critics but also the general public. Once, for a dinner at the Grand Hôtel de Californie in Cannes with Josse Bernheim-Jeune Dauberville and his wife Mathilde, Renoir was pushed in his wheelchair ‘through the corridors to where the dining room was and faithful Gabrielle tied a napkin round his neck and put the knife and fork between his fingers that were deformed by rheumatism. He was obliged to have a spittoon because his lungs were in bad condition and some of his food was mashed by a machine. All the hotel guests had recognized him and, when Gabrielle pushed his chair back at the end of the meal, everyone stood up and applauded him for a long time.’42
With so much popular interest, it is not surprising that the first book-length monograph of any Impressionist was of Renoir: in 1911, Julius Meier-Graefe wrote about Renoir’s art with a hundred reproductions, which was translated from the original German into French the next year.43 Some years later, Renoir’s close friend Albert André wrote another monograph whose text was approved by the artist before its publication in May 1919, seven months before Renoir’s death.44 Back in 1911, on 20 October, the French government promoted Renoir to the rank of officer of the Légion d’Honneur. While liberals like Monet had objected in 1900 when Renoir accepted the first rank of knight, eleven years later, Monet applauded him: ‘My dear Renoir, My congratulations for your nomination to the rank of officer.’45
This popularity had the predictable result of increasing the prices of Renoir’s paintings. In 1899, Monet’s paintings had fetched higher prices than Renoir’s but by 1912 things had changed. For example, two Monets, Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil (c. 1873–74) and Terrace at Ste-Addresse (c. 1866–67) were each sold for 27,000 francs,46 whereas two comparable Renoirs, Parisian Lady (1874) and A Morning Ride in the Bois de Boulogne, were sold for 56,000 francs and 95,000 francs respectively.47 Avid collecting drove up the prices of Renoir’s canvases. For example, his friend Maurice Gangnat amassed 161 works, the largest Renoir collection in Europe.48 The only collection in the world to surpass Gangnat’s became that of an American doctor, Albert C. Barnes of Philadelphia, a millionaire who had patented the antiseptic Argyrol. On 11 December 1912, Barnes first bought two Renoir paintings for 30,000 francs from Vollard. The following year, Barnes wrote to another American collector, Leo Stein: ‘I am convinced that I cannot get too many Renoirs.’49 Eventually Barnes acquired 181 Renoirs.50
From 1910 until Renoir’s death in 1919, at least 37 exhibitions in at least 12 countries displayed a total of at least 605 of Renoir’s works.51 The year with the most exhibitions was 1913, a year before the outbreak of the World War, when 8 different shows displayed a total of 102 Renoir paintings. The most acclaimed exhibition was that in March 1913 at Bernheim-Jeune’s in Paris with 52 of Renoir’s major canvases from 1867 to date. An accompanying illustrated catalogue edited by Octave Mirbeau, contained 58 reviews by other critics dating from 1876.52 Even during the war, there were 224 Renoir works on view in 14 exhibitions.
When the Bernheims decided to publish a book on Rodin, which came out in 1915, they asked Renoir to make a drawing of the sculptor.53 In November 1913, Renoir replied: ‘Dear M
r Bernheim, I would be delighted to do a drawing of Rodin.’54 Gustave Coquiot, a critic working for the Bernheims, was the author and acted as the liaison to Rodin, informing him: ‘Madame Renoir and Renoir await you and Madame Rodin. They are very well settled and everything is ready for your visit. Renoir lives in Cagnes and, in the region, everyone will be able to show you his house. Remember that Renoir is going to do your portrait for our Album that will be published by Bernheim. Cagnes is mid-way between Antibes and Nice. It is only a few kilometres from Nice.’55 Renoir priced the drawing at 1,000 francs.56 Later, Vollard convinced Renoir to make a lithograph from this drawing, with the collaboration of Auguste Clot, and 200 impressions of the Rodin portrait were printed.57
Renoir’s own opinion was ambivalent, despite all this acclaim for his graphic work as well as for his paintings. On the one hand, as we have seen before, in 1913 Cassatt reported: ‘[Renoir] really is to be admired, such courage! And such a helpless cripple, and sufferer. What a blessing that he can paint all the time, and that he is persuaded that what he does now is better than anything that he did before, and that he has made money enough to give himself and his family every comfort.’58 On the other hand, the next year, after the First World War had begun, he confided to André: ‘As for me, I’m painting, if you can call it painting. Just to kill this damn time, which gets old, but like the old guard [the elite guard in Napoleon’s army], doesn’t die. I keep rotting here like an old moulding cheese.’59 Perhaps he did not really believe the praise of others, or perhaps some of his old self-deprecation was resurfacing.
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