Renoir at Auction

Sotheby’s 4 November 2009 Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York 



Included in the November offering were three works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 


Femme au chapeau blanc belongs to a series of oils that Renoir completed in the early 1890s of young women wearing elaborately decorated chapeaux (est. $2.5/3.5 million, £1.5/2 million, €1.8/2.5 million). During the 1890s, Renoir’s life was divided into two distinct parts, both are reflected in his work. On one side were his elite clientele whom he depended upon for portrait commissions and on the other were the lesser-known models, most often young girls, whose youth and beauty enraptured Renoir. While painting formal society portraits sustained the artist’s way of life, his studies of unidentified young women allowed him greater freedom of execution. The present picture is an example of Renoir’s bravura - his rapid feathery brushstrokes lavish attention upon the crisp fabric of the model’s dress, the pleating over her shoulder and the airy crinoline of her hat. 




Also by Renoir is Baigneuse, which offers a superb example of his later style,exemplifying his ability to capture the female form with his fluid, loose brushwork (est. $700,000/1million, £400/600,000, €500/700,000). His masterly painting technique builds up a shimmering paint surface that gives his late nudes their distinctive quality; a style that allowed him to showcase an astonishing mastery of a broad range of painterly effects. It was these late monumental nudes that for many comprised Renoir’s greatest artistic achievement and provided an important source of inspiration for Cézanne and Picasso’s neo-classical nudes. 




Renoir’s still-lives, including Nature Morte aux Pommes et Poires, are some of the most sensually appealing compositions in art history(est. $350/450,000, £200/300,000, €250/350,000). Rendered with the artist’s characteristically soft palette, these compositions capture the aromatic beauty of each succulent piece of fruit. These deceptively simple still-lives, which proved to be wildly popular among clients of Paul Durand-Ruel, revitalized this age-old subject with an Impressionist flair. 




Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 6 February 2013  




L'ombrelle, 1878, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

was painted during the height of Impressionism (estimate: £4-7million). In this radiant painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicts the quintessential Impressionist subject of the fashionably attired Parisienne within a scene of abundantly flowering nature. A celebration of both female elegance and natural beauty, the subject provided bountiful opportunities for Renoir to deconstruct form and experiment with palette. The variegated brushwork consisting of thick and swirling impasto and small dabs of spontaneous and audaciously applied paint, make L'ombrelle one of the artist’s most experimental works of the latter part of the decade. The picture exemplifies Renoir’s ideal of harmoniously integrating a figure into an outdoor setting, and of capturing the myriad effects of light and shade in a range of dazzling colours. L'ombrelle relates to a sequence of exuberantly painted canvases depicting women in garden settings that Renoir executed in the years immediately following the very first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. Having first explored the theme of the woman with an umbrella or parasol as early as 1867, in



Lise à l'ombrelle, these later works may have been inspired by the example of Claude Monet, whom Renoir had visited at his home in Argenteuil during the summer months of 1873 to 1875.










LOT SOLD. 2,322,500 USD



Christie's November 5, 2014

• PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, 
• La jeune fille au cygne ou La jeune fille au héron, 
• oil on canvas, 1886, $5-7 million

 Sotheby's May 7 2014



PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR 
TULIPES
Estimate   1,500,000 — 2,000,000

Christie's 2015




Est. £70,000 - £100,000
($105,910 - $151,300)



 




Christie's 2014

 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Jeunes filles jouant au volant
Pr.$11,365,000



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Femme à l'ombrelle
Pr.$2,517,000 



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Les deux soeurs
Pr.$8,005,000



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Paysage avec figures
Pr.$1,925,000



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Nu au chapeau de paille assis en bordure de
Pr.£1,138,850($1,810,772)



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Mademoiselle Grimprel au ruban rouge
Pr.£3,065,250($4,873,748)



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Coucher de soleil à Douarnenez
Pr.£469,250($746,108)
 
Christie's 2013





 
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Baigneuse accoudée
Pr.£1,721,250($2,692,035)