Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 3

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Tête de Femme Blonde by Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Portrait painting

1908

About the Item

*PLEASE NOTE UK BUYERS WILL ONLY PAY 5% VAT ON THIS PURCHASE. Tête de Femme Blonde by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Oil on canvas 26.1 x 19 cm (10 ¹/₄ x 7 ¹/₂ inches) Signed upper right, Renoir Executed in 1908 From the 1890s onwards, Renoir's portraits were mainly of people from his family or household, often executed on smaller scales. This gives us a touching testimony of the artist's intimacy. This work will be included in the forthcoming Pierre-Auguste Renoir digital catalogue raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc. Provenance: Maurice Gangnat, Paris Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 1925 Eugène Druet, Paris, acquired at the above Palais Galliéra, Paris, 1969 Private collection, Tokyo, circa 1970 Private collection, Japan, acquired circa 1985 Literature: Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Renoir: Catalogue Raisonné des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins et Aquarelles, 1903-10, Paris, 2012, vol. IV, no. 3347 (illustrated p. 393) Artist biography: Renoir began his artistic career as a porcelain painter but began copying paintings at the Louvre in 1860 and eventually entered the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. The four friends began painting in the forest of Fontainebleau, although Renoir always remained dedicated to figure painting and portraits influenced by Gustave Courbet. In the summer of 1869, Renoir painted for two months alongside Monet at La Grenouillère outside Paris. After several of his paintings were rejected by the Salon in the early 1870s, he decided to join Monet in establishing the Impressionists, who sought to capture modern life including everyday people, streets, and surroundings. Renoir's penchant for portraiture attracted the attention of a range of patrons with avant-garde sensibilities and sustained him financially. His doubts about the spontaneity and impermanence of the Impressionist aesthetic led him to refuse to participate in the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1878. Instead, he decided to look back to the old masters, leaving for Italy in 1881 to continue his self-education in the 'grandeur and simplicity of the ancient painters.' He returned enamored of Raphael and Pompeii and his figures consequently became more crisply drawn and sculptural in character. By the late 1880s and early 1890s, Renoir had shifted his investigation of the old masters from linear classicism to the colouristic traditions of Titian and Rubens as well as the unabashedly sensual beauty of eighteenth-century French art such as the nudes of Rubens and Fragonard. Renoir's most important series of the decade came from an invitation by the French government to execute a painting for the Musée du Luxembourg, a new museum devoted to the work of living artists. Renoir made five versions of Two Young Girls at the Piano for the Minister of Fine Arts to choose from; the version in the Metropolitan's Robert Lehman Collection is one of the finest. The subject of girls at a piano recalls eighteenth-century French genre scenes, especially those of Fragonard. In the early twentieth century, despite old age and declining health, Renoir persisted in artistic experimentation. He took up sculpture and continued to paint portraits attesting to his continued admiration of Renaissance art. Renoir was also drawn to an arcadian ideal of Mediterranean classicism in his art. This artistic preoccupation is nowhere more apparent than in his twentieth-century bathers. The Rubenesque nudes he had been painting reached a level of unprecedented exaggeration in the twentieth century, culminating in the massive Bathers at the Musée d'Orsay.
More From This SellerView All
  • Le Collier de Perles by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro - Portrait painting
    By Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    Le Collier de Perles by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952) Oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm (24 x 19 ⅝ inches) Signed and dated lower right, Ludovic Rodo 1927...
    Category

    1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Portrait of a Woman by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro - Portrait painting
    By Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    *UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 20% VAT ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE Portrait of a Woman by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952) Oil on canvas 55 x 46 cm (21 ⁵/₈ x 18 ¹/₈ inches) Signed...
    Category

    Early 1900s Fauvist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • Femme à la cravatte by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro - Portrait painting
    By Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    Femme à la cravatte by Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952) Oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm (25 ⁵/₈ x 21 ¹/₄ inches) Signed lower right, Ludovic Rodo Executed circa 1910 This work is accompan...
    Category

    1910s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • Figurative oil painting titled Femme Mettant Son Bas by Georges Manzana Pissarro
    By Georges Henri Manzana Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    Femme Mettant Son Bas by Georges Manzana Pissarro (1871 - 1961) Oil on canvas 100 x 56 cm (39 ⅜ x 22 inches) Signed and dated lower left, G. Manzana 1905 This work is accompanied by...
    Category

    Early 1900s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Nylons and Bric-a-Brac by Orovida Pissarro - Oil painting
    By Orovida Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    *UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 20% VAT ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE Nylons and Bric-a-Brac by Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968) Oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm (28 ³/₄ x 23 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed and dated upper right Orovida 1951 Provenance Estate of the artist With John Bensusan-Butt, cousin of the artist G Hassell, 25th November 1988 With John Noott, 10th June 1992 Literature K L Erickson, Orovida Pissarro: Painter and Print-Maker with A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, (doctoral thesis), Oxford, 1992, Appendices, no. 141 (illustrated) Exhibition London, Redfern Gallery, Recent Paintings: Orovida, 3rd-26th January 1952, no. 51 Artist biography Orovida Camille Pissarro, Lucien and Esther Pissarro’s only child, was the first woman in the Pissarro family as well as the first of her generation to become an artist. Born in Epping, England in 1893, she lived and worked predominantly in London where she became a prominent member of several British arts clubs and societies. She first learned to paint in the Impressionist style of her father, but after a brief period of formal study with Walter Sickert in 1913 she renounced formal art schooling. Throughout her career, Orovida always remained outside of any mainstream British art movements. Much to Lucien's disappointment she soon turned away from naturalistic painting and developed her own unusual style combining elements of Japanese, Chinese, Persian and Indian art. Her rejection of Impressionism, which for the Pissarro family had become a way of life, together with the simultaneous decision to drop her famous last name and simply use Orovida as a ‘nom de peintre’, reflected a deep desire for independence and distance from the weight of the family legacy. Orovida's most distinctive and notable works were produced from the period of 1919 to 1939 using her own homemade egg tempera applied in thin, delicate washes to silk, linen or paper and sometimes embellished with brocade borders. These elegant and richly decorative works generally depict Eastern, Asian and African subjects...
    Category

    1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • The Fortune Teller by Orovida Pissarro - Oil painting
    By Orovida Pissarro
    Located in London, GB
    *UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 20% VAT ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE The Fortune Teller by Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968) Oil on canvas 60 x 73 cm (23 ⁵/₈ x 28 ³/₄ inches) Signed and d...
    Category

    1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like
  • Maria Van Rysselberghe au coin du feu
    By Theo van Rysselberghe
    Located in Palm Desert, CA
    "Maria Van Rysselberghe au coin du feu" is a portrait painting by Post-Impressionist Théo van Rysselberghe. The portrait is signed lower right, "Atelier Van Rysselberghe". The framed...
    Category

    1910s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe
    By Theo van Rysselberghe
    Located in Palm Desert, CA
    "Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe" is a Post-Impressionist painting by Théo van Rysselberghe. The portrait is signed with monogram and dedication, upper right, "pour ma petite amie Sylvie ...
    Category

    Early 1900s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • La lecture au jardin (Lesson in the Garden)
    By Georges d'Espagnat
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    French Post-Impressionist painter Georges d’Espagnat captures a charming moment between a mother and her child in this vibrant oil on canvas. Rendered with a studied use of complementary colors and bold brushstrokes, the painting showcases the artist's unique Post-Impressionist style. Remembered as one of the most individualistic artists of the 20th century, his distinctive canvases bring together the loose brushwork of the Impressionists and the bold color palette favored by the Fauves. Together, they achieve a vibrant spontaneity that lends itself well to the carefree subjects of the present work. Masterfully composed, La lecture au jardin moves beyond the Impressionist instinct to capture a fleeting moment on canvas. Rather, d'Espagnat succeeds in creating a deep feeling of harmony in the work. Warm colors are perfectly balanced with cool tones, while vertical and horizontal lines are softened by the curves of the foliage and his subjects' figures. Through his simplification of forms and intentional use of color and line, he creates a scene that is carefully designed and thoroughly modern. A similar view of a mother and her child by d'Espagnat is currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). The Post-Impressionist painter was an individualist since his youth, choosing to forgo traditional schooling in order to independently study the Old Masters in the Louvre. He soon became involved with the most prominent Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters of the age, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Signac, who themselves existed outside the traditional norms of French Academic training. In 1891, he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, and again the following year at the Salon des Indépendants. By 1895, he held his first one-man show in Paris, and just three years later his success earned him a solo show at the prestigious Durand-Ruel Gallery. Between 1905 and 1910 he made several trips to visit Renoir on the Côte d’Azur. Their close friendship resulted in a group exhibition at Marcel Bernheim...
    Category

    Late 19th Century Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • L’air Qu’on Respire by Jean Pierre Cassigneul
    By Jean-Pierre Cassigneul
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    Jean-Pierre Cassigneul b.1935 French L’air qu’on respire (The Air We Breath) Signed “Cassigneul” (lower right) Signed, titled and dated "L’air qu’on respire / Cassigneul / 2001" (...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • 'Lieselotte Friedländer', Bauhaus, Berlin National Gallery, Munich Sezession
    By Georg Rössner
    Located in Santa Cruz, CA
    Signed lower left, 'Georg W. Rössner' for Georg Walter Rössner (German, 1885-1972), titled 'Bildnis Lieselotte Friedländer' and painted circa 1926; original artist card verso. A substantial, Modernist portrait of the fashion designer, Lieselotte Friedländer, shown seated in a chrome-steel Bauhaus chair with a view beyond to a sunlit, woodland grove. Georg Rössner first studied in Berlin and, later, in Paris with Lovis Corinth. Rössner was a member of both the Berlin and Munich Sezession committees and, in 1920, was appointed professor at Berlin’s Staatliche Kunstschule. Over the course of a long career, Rössner exhibited internationally with success including at the 1929 Paris Exhibition des Peintres-Graveurs Allemands. His work is held in prominent private and public collections including the permanent collection of the National Gallery in Berlin.  Born in 1898, Lieselotte Friedländer moved to Berlin with her family in 1909. By the mid-1920s, she had established herself as the Weimar Republic...
    Category

    1920s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • 'Man in a Gold and Coral Turban', Copenhagen, Royal Academy, Benezit, Rajah, Oil
    By Hugo Vilfred Pedersen
    Located in Santa Cruz, CA
    Signed lower left, 'Hugo V.P.' for Hugo Vilfred Pedersen (Danish, 1870-1959) and painted circa 1900. An antique oil painting of an Indian gentleman wearing a saffron and coral turban...
    Category

    Early 1900s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

Recently Viewed

View All