Renoir at the Clark

There can be little doubt that Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) liked women. Over the course of his long career, he continually turned to the human figure for inspiration—and not infrequently to the nude female form.

Now, in the first major exploration of Renoir’s enduring interest in the human form, the Clark Art Institute and the Kimbell Art Museum present Renoir: The Body, The Senses, a reconsideration of Renoir as an evolving artist whose style moved from Realism into Impressionism and culminated in the modern classicism of his last decades. At the end of his career, his revolutionary style of painting inspired masters of modernism such as Picasso.

The exhibition, conceived in recognition of the centenary of Renoir’s death, will be on view at the Clark in Williamstown MA through September 22nd and at the Kimbell in Fort Worth, Texas, starting October 27th. It has been co-organized by Esther Bell, Martha and Robert Lipp, chief curator at the Clark, and George T.M. Shackelford, deputy director at the Kimbell. It includes some 70 paintings, drawings, pastels and sculptures by the artist as well as works by his predecessors, contemporaries and followers.

An international roster of loaned works includes stellar—albeit sometimes controversial—works such as Boy with a Cat; Study: Torso, Effect of Sun; Seated Bather; and The Bathers, as well as major contributions from the Clark’s own collection of the artist’s work.

Renoir’s respect for tradition is demonstrated by comparison with such paintings as Peter Paul Rubens’ The Three Graces,Eugène Delacroix’s Andromeda and Camille Corot’s The Repose.

“Our exhibition will survey Renoir’s long career through the lens of the single subject that defines his legacy,” said Esther Bell. “It’s the subject that most compellingly demonstrates how truly radical—and so often brilliant—he was.”

In an interview conducted for the exhibition catalogue, contemporary artist Lisa Yuskavage, whose work prominently features the female nude, discusses why Renoir endures as an artist worthy of continued examination. “…Renoir doesn’t impress everyone. And yet he persists. I really do think that the serious conundrum is why. I think that is a worthwhile thing to try to understand. … It’s not just because a lot of people like it. I think the answer really lies in understanding who has loved it.”

Indeed, Renoir had a fervent following—idolized by artists including Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, as well as by renowned collectors such as the Clark’s founders, Sterling and Francine Clark. Henri Matisse once exclaimed of Renoir, “his nudes…the loveliest nudes ever painted: no one has done better—no one.”

But he also had virulent detractors. Critic Albert Wolff wrote in Le Figaro in 1876, “Would someone kindly explain to M. Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with the green and purplish blotches that indicate a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse ... .” He was referring to Study: Torso, Effect of Sun, now regarded as one of the high points of Impressionism.

And feminist art historian Linda Nochlin described Renoir’s late style as depicting “bleached, blubbery whale women” in which the female form has “expanded, liquified and deboned itself.”

Today, Renoir remains a polarizing figure worthy of scholarly investigation and reconsideration by contemporary audiences. But despite the mixed reactions to his work, for Renoir there was only one goal for art. “For me, a painting should be something likable, joyous, and pretty, yes pretty! There are enough annoying things in life that we need not create still more,” he said.

And some of his paintings are truly joyous, filled with light and color. In 1854, 13-year-old Renoir, who had been born virtually in the shadows of the Louvre, entered an apprenticeship painting porcelain for the firm Lévy Frères. He worked there for approximately four years, an experience some art historians have credited for influencing the light pastel tones of some of his early works.

In 1861, Renoir entered the studio of Swiss artist, Charles Gleyre, to prepare for entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was admitted the following spring.

Only three years later, The Salon jury accepted two paintings by Renoir—a portrait and a landscape. And that same year, he met two people who would be influential in his life, painter Gustave Courbet, and Lise Tréhot, who becomes Renoir’s companion and most prominent model for the next seven years. She appeared in such works as the confection, Lise with a Parasol. In 1870, Lise Tréhot was the model for all three works he exhibited in the Salon.

The Salon, the arbiter of artistic taste in France at that time, refused his nude painting of Diana, The Huntress in 1867, and in response, Renoir and his friends signed a petition demanding a new Salon des Refusés, an exhibition for paintings rejected from The Salon.

Starting in 1872, change was in the air for Renoir. His relationship with Tréhot ended and the Salon jury again rejected his submission. By 1874, he had switched allegiances and exhibited seven paintings at the First Impressionist Exhibition. In 1876, in the Second Impressionist Exhibition, Renoir exhibited 17 paintings and one pastel, a number surpassed only a year later when he exhibited 21 paintings, including Dance at Moulin de la Galette.

His love life improved in 1880 when he met Aline Charigot, 20 years his junior, who quickly became one of his favorite and most prolific models. She also became his lover, mother of his three children and eventually, in 1890, his wife, a marriage that lasted until her premature death in 1915.

Renoir and Aline traveled to Algeria in spring 1881 and spent the autumn and winter in Italy, where he painted her as the Blonde Bather. In 1894 Renoir and Aline celebrated the birth of a second son and Aline’s cousin, Gabrielle Renard, moved in to be their nanny, cook and caretaker. She also quickly became one of Renoir’s favorite models eventually provoking Aline’s jealousy.

In the 1890s, Renoir started to suffer from the rheumatism that eventually crippled his hands. In 1898, seeking relief from his ailment, Renoir traveled to southern France, paving the way for his eventual purchase there of Les Collettes, a seven-acre farm. Despite the deformity of his hands, he continued to paint at a rapid rate producing an estimated 4,000 paintings over the span of his career.

In 1907, the Metropolitan Museum of Art became the first American museum to acquire a Renoir but it was not many years before Sterling Clark, an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and an inveterate art collector, discovered his taste for Renoir’s work. In 1916 he purchased his first Renoir painting, Young Woman Crocheting, and over the next 35 years acquired 37 more works, forming a nucleus of the Clark Art Institute’s collection.

Renoir died in 1918.

A number of events related to the Clark exhibition have been planned for August and September. On August 24th, Martha Lucy, deputy director for Research, Interpretation and Education Barnes Foundation, presents the lecture The Trouble with Renoir. Lucy, will explore the wildly divergent reactions to Renoir over the past 100 years, focusing especially on the voluptuous nudes presented in the exhibition.

To view the entire schedule of programs, please click on the link beow.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street. Galleries are open daily, 10AM to 5PM, in July and August. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger and students with valid ID.