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The exhibition Passion for Renoir. The Collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
on display at the Museo del Prado, is the first monographic exhibition to be devoted to the artist in this country.
It comprises an outstanding group of works by Renoir dating from his early and most renowned periods up to around 1900.
In total, the exhibition includes 31 works that cover all the major genres in which Renoir worked.
The artist was not only an Impressionist like his fellow members of that group, in addition,
and in a profound sense, he was also a painter after the Old Masters.
On numerous occasions throughout his career Renoir revealed his fascination with the type of painting to be seen in museums:
the great Venetian painters, Flemish painting and even Spanish painting,
including Velázquez, whose work he encountered at first hand during his trip to Madrid in 1892, when he visited the Prado.
In addition, Renoir greatly appreciated the French tradition of painting, in particular the 18th century,
and it can thus be said that his dual nature as an artist is fully revealed here; on the one hand as an Impressionist,
and on the other as a painter fully conscious of the great tradition of European painting to which he considered himself heir.
The works from Clark’s collection have been divided into six sections, starting with portraits.
Renoir was a painter particularly attracted to the human form. Together with Degas, he was the most interested in this subject among the Impressionists
and the group of portraits on display in this section is further enriched by two self-portraits,
the first of which is outstandingly expressive
while the second, which dates from a slightly later period, is much more serene.
We also have the portrait of Père Fournaise,
which is typical of Renoir’s early period and is highly characteristic of Impressionism.
Above all, however, Renoir was a painter of female figures and the exhibition includes portraits such as the one of Durand-Ruel’s daughter, Thérèse Berard.
His most important contribution in this area, however, took the form of his compositions of young girls depicted in interiors,
in a spontaneous manner and in a variety of poses. These are very sensual, intimate works
and fall within a tradition that connects to 18th-century French painting.
This is the aspect of Renoir that is best represented in Clark’s collection and the one that most appealed to collectors.
We also have examples of landscape, which was a key genre for Impressionism
given that this movement aimed to represent nature in the most objective manner possible.
The exhibition includes a sizeable group of works including various masterpieces from the artist’s early period
in which we see Renoir’s particular contribution to the genre through his use of a very broad brushstroke
with evanescent touches of pigment and velvety colours, particularly his characteristic blue.
Also on display are flower paintings and still lifes. Renoir was truly a painter of flowers
and was particularly fond of this genre as it gave him great freedom
and allowed for a daring treatment of colour, which is loose, fresh and vivid.
The artist began his career as a decorative painter of porcelain and then moved on to flower painting.
Later on in his career he still revealed his fascination for a motif
that allowed him to convey his characteristically lively, brilliant palette.
The still lifes, particularly two of them, Onions,
Clark’s favourite work and a highly Cézanne-like composition with a fruit bowl,
allow us to appreciate Renoir’s contribution to this genre, which had a particularly rich tradition in France.
The artist takes 18th-century models as his starting point to arrive at the innovations of his contemporary, Cézanne.
Within the painting of the human form the nude was also an outstandingly important genre for Renoir,
particularly after his Italian trip of 1881-82 when he made contact with the great tradition of the French Renaissance
and was profoundly attracted to the primacy of the drawn line and outline.
Renoir evolved towards a style close to that of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, the great 19th-century French master of the nude.
Bather combing her Hair, for example, reveals a similarity with the ideas of late Ingres.
It also shows how Renoir became a sort of intermediary stage between Ingres and Neo-classicism
and the revival of form and line undertaken by subsequent artists of the early 20th century.
It is worth noting that both Picasso and Matisse, perhaps the two most important painters of the 20th century
and both champions of form, both highly appreciated Renoir.
The exhibition concludes with various works from a slightly later date, after 1890,
although they are few in number. The latest is a portrait of the young Jacques Fray,
a fine portrait of a young boy of around 1903-04, dating from Renoir’s last period
in which his brushstroke was much looser and in which we see a use of golden light and a remarkable sense of warmth.
This period of Renoir was highly appreciated in the first half of the 20th century but was perhaps the one that least interested Clark.
His collection thus includes fewer works from this period than from the early period of the 1870s and 1880s,
corresponding to the most original aspect of Renoir’s style and the one that might seem to be of most interest here.