9781422271797

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

PLATE 2 The Painter Lacoeur in the Forest of Fontainebleau (1866) Oil on canvas, 41 3 ⁄ 4 x 31 1 ⁄ 2 inches (106 x 80 cm) The influence of two of Renoir’s early mentors can be seen in this painting. The general effect of the work shows the quality of Courbet in its heavy paint and sturdy drawing and, in its plein-air treatment in the Forest of Fontainebleau, the impact of Diaz’s admonition to him two years earlier to stop using black. Painted while he was staying at Marlotte, near Fontainebleau, the painting represents only one aspect of Renoir’s style at that time since, while at Marlotte, he also painted The Inn of Mother Anthony, a scene at the inn at which he stayed, with his friends Monet, Bazille, and Sisley all depicted in it. This painting is dark with much black and linear outlining. Bazille, born in Montpellier, had originally been expected by his father to follow a medical career, but the attraction of painting drew him to Paris and Gleyre’s atelier, where he met Monet, Sisley, and Renoir, and they were close friends until Frédéric Bazille was killed in the Franco Prussian War of 1870. Bazille was talented and painted his friends in their studios, as well as himself acting as a model for them. He was tall and thin, as is evident in the crouching pose in this painting, and he is consequently easily recognizable in their paintings. For example, he appears twice in Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe . Renoir’s style at the time still owed much to Courbet, and this is not an “Impressionist” work. It is constructed on the academic tonal method and is far closer to Manet than the paintings of his friends. PLATE 3 (right) Portrait of Frédéric Bazille (1867) Oil on canvas, 41 1 ⁄ 3 x 29 inches (105 x 73.5 cm)

as declared by him and revealed in his temperament are ultimately far from those of other Impressionists—Monet or Pissarro, for instance—however superficially similar they may seem. Of course, this is not surprising; as we are constantly being reminded, we are all different with a unique experience and philosophy. We do not remain through life the same individual as when we began it. Renoir, at the age of twenty-two when in the studio of Gabriel-Charles Gleyre, learning methods and technique as a student with Monet and Bazille, had once been accused by Gleyre of “seeming to take painting as a pleasure.” Renoir’s reply: “Quite true, if painting were not a pleasure to me, I certainly should not do it.” This is perhaps a more significant remark than even Renoir

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