Renoir
Page 36
The way that Renoir handled Aline’s burial decisions and the fact that they were not buried together showed his family and friends that he had not had a great marriage and that, in his own subtly manipulative way, he could at last reject Aline. Four and a half years later, at the time of his own death he still had not purchased a plot for his own tomb.258
Aline’s body remained in the crypt in Nice for seven years until well after Renoir’s death; at that date, the family sent it to the Essoyes cemetery. Nonetheless, Renoir wanted something of his once passionate love for Aline to appear eventually on her tombstone. A year after her death, Renoir commissioned Guino to create such a statue. As the prototype for the sculpture, Renoir thought of a painting then in his studio, his 1885 Nursing, of Aline nursing infant Pierre.259 Before Guino’s arrival, Renoir made a new oil sketch of Nursing.260 In July 1916, he wrote to Guino: ‘Please come as soon as possible to Essoyes. I have a study of my wife sitting. I would like you to model a clay bust from the painting. I’m counting on you.’261 Guino created a statue 53.7 centimetres (21⅛ inches) high, the ‘clay bust’ Renoir specified, of Aline nursing based on Renoir’s 1916 oil sketch.262 However, this nursing statue did not satisfy Renoir, who asked Guino to make another bust-size statue, this time based on his 1885 Portrait of Aline,263 another painting he kept in his studio (see page 133). In this painting, a flower appears on Aline’s hat, which Guino follows in his statue. In Cagnes, on 22 January 1918, Guino wrote: ‘Received from M. Auguste Renoir the sum of three thousand francs for a copy in painted plaster of a bust of Mme Renoir.’264 This statue 59.7 centimetres (23½ inches) high was later cast in bronze.265 Two and a half years after Renoir’s death, when the bodies of Aline and Renoir were transported from Nice to Essoyes, and when the vertical tombstones were in place, Guino’s bust of Aline was placed atop her tomb. On top of Renoir’s tomb, the family placed Guino’s 1913 bust of Renoir (see page 355).266
Renoir treated Aline’s death as a non-event. Aside from purchasing her burial plot and eventually planning for a statue to go atop her tomb, his lack of bereavement starkly contrasts with Monet’s prolonged grief after the death of his second wife, Alice Hoschedé Monet, in 1911. Monet’s friends were still discussing his profound mourning three years later when Monet’s son Jean died. At that time, in early 1914, Cassatt wrote to Durand-Ruel: ‘The death of his son is very sad for Monet who has been so distressed by the death of his wife.’267 Monet displayed his grief in every letter by writing on black-bordered mourning stationery, whereas Renoir never used black-rimmed paper and barely mentioned his wife’s death in any correspondence. In all the known correspondence, Renoir mentioned Aline’s death only twice: first, the day after she died, he wrote: ‘My dear Durand-Ruel, already ill, my wife returned from Gérardmer shattered. She never recovered. She died yesterday, thankfully without knowing it. Your old friend, Renoir.’268 Second, three years later, Renoir informed a Japanese student, R. Umehara: ‘My wife died three years ago and my two eldest were very seriously wounded.’269
The only record of expressions of true grief came from Aline’s mother, who, six months after Aline’s death, wrote to her grandson, Jean: ‘I feel very sorry for you my dear children and also for your father who really deserves sympathy. What a loss and what grief for everyone.’270 Emilie, then aged seventy-six and suffering from rheumatism and asthma, missed her daughter not only for her company, but also because Aline had been supporting her, perhaps without Renoir’s knowledge. Aline had died during the war when things were, as Emilie wrote in the same letter: ‘more than four times more expensive than usual.’ Three months after Aline’s death, from Essoyes where she was living, Emilie had tentatively appealed to Renoir for money. The painter responded by having Grand’ Louise send her 200 francs. Receiving no further funds, Emilie had become desperate by mid-December 1915 and reached out instead to Jean, aged twenty-one, whom she perhaps thought might be more sympathetic. In the same letter, she wrote: ‘I cannot tell you how painful it is for me to have to ask you for money…. Why take away from me, at the age of seventy-six, what my poor child was giving me…. I have received 200 francs since 4 Sept; it is impossible to live [on this]; you are driving me into debt…. I am depending on you, my dear Jean, to speak to your father on my behalf.’271 It is not known what transpired after this letter. However, two years later, on 1 March 1917, Emilie died. Even though Aline’s body was still in the Nice crypt, Thérèse Emilie was buried in Aline’s plot since she was an ascendant. Aline’s father, Victor Charigot, had died in 1898 in America and was buried there.272 Because Victor had been a failure as a husband and father, the family made sure not to include ‘Charigot’ on the tombstone where Aline and her mother were buried. Instead, Aline is designated as Aline Victorine Renoir and her mother as Thérèse Mélanie Maire, her maiden name.273
In December 1915, six months after Aline’s death, while Emilie was seeking a way to have her son-in-law support her, Renoir was preoccupied with an enormous inheritance tax that he had to pay to the French government based on the estimated worth of his total estate as a result of his wife’s death. On 17 December, he wrote to Vollard: ‘I have, according to the notary in Cagnes, 25 thousand francs to pay before 26 December.’274 A day later, Renoir wrote to Gangnat: ‘For a month I have been negotiating with a notary who tells me that this inheritance will cost me 25,000 francs. A highly regarded lawyer in Nice said to me that this is extremely exaggerated.’275 To determine how much money he owed the government, Renoir needed to provide inventories from his multiple studios and apartments in Cagnes, Nice, Essoyes and Paris. From Cagnes, Renoir tried to enlist friends and family in Paris (Durand-Ruel, Gangnat, Pierre and Vollard) to help in the Paris inventory. Also on 18 December, Renoir wrote again to Vollard: ‘Here is the address of La Boulangère to get the keys: Madame Dupuy 23 rue [de] Clignancourt, Paris.’276 Renoir was involved in the minutiae of this legal process. In the same letter, he sent Vollard a list of eighty-two paintings and the valuation of each. The most valuable were four figure studies, each priced at 5,000 francs: Portrait of Louise, Women on the Sofa, Woman as Venus, Bust of Milkmaid. The least valuable was Bouquet at 300 francs. His list specified the total value of the eighty-two paintings at ‘99,200 francs’.277 Therefore, the estimated tax of 25,000 francs was roughly at 25 per cent.
In forming the inventories and dealing with the lawyers, Renoir tried to pay as little tax as possible. He affirmed that his unsigned works had no value at all and that he should not have to pay tax on them, writing to Gangnat in mid-December 1915: ‘I must tell you that the sketches and paintings that are not signed have no value since I can and I must always look at them before sending them away.’278 Renoir insisted on dealing with the officials himself, as he wrote to Jeanne Baudot: ‘My dear Jeanne, Everything has been going relatively well…. Drawing up inventories has left me numb. I must deal with notaries, attorneys, etc.’279 Renoir’s annoyance about taxes was still continuing seven months after Aline’s death, when he wrote to André: ‘Since my wife’s death, I haven’t had a moment of quiet: two notaries, one lawyer, inventories and a huge sum to pay for the paintings I have left and all the rest. Anyhow, I can’t complain too much. I am more or less on my feet (in a manner of speaking).’280 Thus, while Monet’s passionate relationship to his second wife left him bereaved for a long time after her death, Renoir’s sadly failed marriage left him preoccupied with losing money to taxes rather than with losing his partner of thirty-seven years.
It was a pity that Renoir, the painter of love, suffered such an unfulfilled relationship. What had started as a passionate love affair with Aline in 1878 continued to be warm and supportive while the couple were poor, unmarried and the parents of infant Pierre. By the time they married in 1890, after Renoir had become rich, famous and sickly, Aline had become more insistent on a luxurious lifestyle, which Renoir detested. Since Renoir shied away from conflict and would not fight directly for what he wanted, he often gave in to Aline’s demands, such as for a house
in Essoyes that he did not want. His only consolation was to complain about his domineering wife to his friends behind Aline’s back, and to do what he wanted without her knowledge or approval. Renoir’s growing discomfort with Aline’s demands explains why they often lived apart.
The other key woman in his life, his daughter, presented a Catch-22 for Renoir’s relationship with Aline. On the one hand, Renoir never knew how Aline would behave towards his daughter, the product of his love affair with a model before he had met Aline. He did not know if Aline would be kind to Jeanne, the motherless girl, as she was to other motherless girls – Julie Manet, Jeanne and Paule Gobillard and Renée Rivière. Apparently, Renoir did not believe that Aline would embrace his daughter either out of sympathy with her past or out of respect for his love for Jeanne. As we have seen, Aline’s jealousy was a character trait noted by Cassatt,281 by the Bernheims282 and by Coco.283 It seems that Renoir felt that Jeanne would stir up Aline’s jealousy, both towards Renoir’s first model, Lise, and towards Jeanne herself. Hence Renoir kept this bomb-like secret from Aline.
On the other hand, even if Renoir often acquiesced to Aline’s demands, his secret loving relationship with his illegitimate daughter, Jeanne, demonstrates that he was willing to risk his marriage for her. His friendship with Aline deteriorated over the years as a result of differing attitudes to living with wealth, which led to a lack of trust and paucity of communication. In the end, Aline and Renoir’s relationship was a shadow of what it had been earlier and was evidence of how alienated they had become throughout the years. The fact that Renoir refused to be buried in the same plot where Aline was buried signalled to his family and friends that their marriage had not been happy. What a sad, ironic situation for Renoir, the painter of love!
Chapter 7
1915–19
Renoir aged 74–78;
End of War,
International Acclaim,
Pottery with Coco,
Jean and Dédée
With Aline gone from Renoir’s life, the painter continued to pursue the two things that had always been most important to him: to paint and to surround himself with friends. As he wrote on 17 November 1915 to his sculptural assistant, Guino: ‘I have been bored and alone for three weeks now and nobody is coming. I only ask one thing, to be with people…. Come as soon as possible.’1 Despite his determination to keep painting, his crippled body made life difficult for him. He was often bedridden for weeks at a time, as he complained to Georges Durand-Ruel a year later: ‘As for me, I’m in very, very bad shape. I have a ton of afflictions that make my life unbearable: loss of appetite, kidney pain, troubles I can’t get rid of. I haven’t left my room in five weeks now, which isn’t fun.’2
Renoir’s suffering was well known and inspired a range of reactions from his friends. Monet, on one hand, found his perseverance heroic, as he wrote to Georges Durand-Ruel in December 1916: ‘As for Renoir, he’s still amazing. He is supposed to be very sick, but then suddenly one hears that despite everything he is hard at work and forging ahead all the same. He’s just simply awe-inspiring.’3 André, on the other hand, feared for his friend who he thought might die at any time, as he wrote to their mutual dealer the same month: ‘it would be cruel to bother the poor man in his last moments’.4 A year later, André again wrote to Paul Durand-Ruel of his concerns: ‘Renoir continues to make marvellous things but I find that he is getting weaker and weaker. He is starting to wish for death as a deliverance, which isn’t a good sign, especially from him who used to make projects as if he had forty more years to live.’5 This new pessimism worried André because Renoir had always been positive. Renoir himself was aware that, though he tried to be optimistic, now he occasionally felt hopeless, as when he told Durand-Ruel the following spring: ‘I am suffering at the moment from rheumatism in my left foot and I spend horribly disagreeable nights without sleep. The heat of the bed makes me suffer so much that I have to get up in the middle of the night. Until now, all that I have done [for this foot] has been useless. I hope that this [problem] won’t last as long as the war.’6
Since Renoir could not walk, he developed circulation problems in his feet, resulting in gangrene in one toe. In May 1918, André wrote to Paul Durand-Ruel: ‘I have just received some very bad news from Renoir. He has to have his toe amputated. What will happen next?’7 Almost three weeks later, the toe had not yet been removed, as Renoir explained to Jeanne Baudot: ‘My dear Jeanne, I have been suffering day and night for months now, so far without any hope of an end in sight…. And all of this for a mere big toe which needs to be amputated one of these days. Since my feet are so swollen, it is impossible to numb [for the surgery] even just the sick part [the toe]. It is terribly hot these days and I have no fuel [for his car, because of the war] to escape this oven; in any case, my surgeon would prevent me from leaving.’8 Eventually the toe was amputated.
During Renoir’s last years, his deformed hands prompted people to doubt his ability to paint. Some even assumed that assistants painted his later works. In truth, Renoir painted every stroke in all his paintings, even when severely disabled. As proof, Renoir allowed film-makers to record his painting process. In one of these films, Sacha Guitry’s The Great Ones among Us of 1915, lasting only three minutes, Coco aged fourteen helps his father and alternately gives and removes either a paintbrush or a lit cigarette.9 Guitry himself (1885–1957), the Russian film-maker, actor and poet, talks with Renoir.10 Other films also prove that the severely disabled Renoir could still paint.11 Renoir had adequate mobility in his shoulders and elbows to allow the use of his wrists, thumbs and hands, even though his fingers were partially dislocated and severely damaged by his rheumatoid arthritis.12 The films demonstrate Renoir’s range of movement, which enabled him to lean forwards and back from the canvas, to control his brush finely, to support his right hand with his left and, on occasion, to paint with the two hands together (see page 320).13 He did, however, need assistance to prepare little mounds of paint on his palette, into which Renoir could dip his brush.
Several accounts contend that Renoir’s brushes were tied to his hands but Guitry’s and other films clearly demonstrate that it was unnecessary to tie anything since Renoir’s rigid fingers were tightly contracted close to one another. Nonetheless, to avoid ripping the fragile skin of his palms with the wooden handle of his paintbrush, a little piece of cloth was inserted in his palm, held in place with linen strips tied round and knotted at his wrists.14 These films also demonstrate Renoir’s chain smoking, undeterred by arthritis in his fingers. Just as Renoir held and manipulated his paintbrush between his thumb and next two fingers, so he grasped his ever-present cigarette between these same three digits. Renoir could skilfully move the cigarette from his right hand to his left and move it back and forth to his lips. In the same manner, the movies show that Renoir moved the paintbrush to and from his palette and from this palette to his canvas. Occasionally he painted by pressing his hands together, as may be seen in a photograph taken by Coco in 1916 or 1917.
Renoir painting with two hands, c. 1916–17. 7.9 × 6.2 cm (6¾ × 4⅞ in.). Photo by Coco Renoir. Pont Saint-Esprit, Musée d’Art Sacré du Gard, Bequest of Jacqueline Bret-André 2008
Another accurate description of Renoir’s painting method appears in André’s book on Renoir (written at the end of Renoir’s life and approved by the elderly artist15): ‘I am always astounded and filled with wonder at the dexterity and steadiness with which his martyrized hand operates…. He can no longer change paintbrushes throughout the course of his work. Once chosen and pressed between his paralysed fingers, the brush moves from the canvas to the oil cup where it is cleaned and returns to the palette to take a little paint back to the canvas. Once exhaustion numbs his hand, someone has to pull the paintbrush from his fingers, which cannot open. He has someone give him a cigarette, rolls back his wheelchair, closes one eye, grumbles if he is not satisfied or gives himself little pep talks before returning to work.’16 In addition to writing about Renoir, André did
several paintings showing Renoir at work. André’s description perfectly captures what Guitry’s 1915 film shows.
During the last four years of his life, as he had from the early 1900s, Renoir continued to portray large, sensual women enjoying the life he could no longer experience. His female figures of this period have superhuman proportions and are active: their heads turn, their limbs move and their backs twist. Sexuality, maternity and comfort pervade these late works.17 Such images differ profoundly from Renoir’s personal crippled, emaciated reality. These paintings doubtless brought comfort to Renoir, who could live vicariously through his images.
Renoir’s joyful, life-affirming art raised the spirits of people embroiled in the First World War. In London, for example, in July 1917, a hundred British artists and collectors signed a letter to Renoir praising his 1881–85 The Umbrellas,18 when it was first hung at the National Gallery: ‘From the moment when your painting was installed among the masterpieces of the ancient masters, we had the joy of realizing that one of our contemporaries had suddenly taken his place among the great masters of the European tradition.’19 This tribute must have pleased Renoir, whose stated goal had always been originality within tradition.