Biography: Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on February 25, 1841. With his father, Léonard (1799–1874), a tailor, his mother, Marguerite (1807–1896), a seamstress, and three siblings, he moved to the center of Paris when he was a boy. He would be the fourth of five children. The couple’s financial circumstances were harsh, and the family lived in various small, walk-up apartments which also served as their place of business. At thirteen, Auguste took up an apprenticeship painting traditional designs on porcelains at Lévy Frères; when the business closed in 1858, he continued with decorative work to contribute to the family income. In 1860, he gained permission to copy in the Musée du Louvre; in 1861, he enrolled with the Swiss academician Charles Gleyre. Gleyre ran a private teaching studio that functioned apart from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Renoir’s preferences for the work of the seventeenth-century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and of his somewhat older contemporary and friend Edouard Manet suggest that he was always interested in the human figure; although he would also be a prolific painter of landscape and still life, these were secondary interests.
While attending Gleyre’s studio in 1862, Renoir met Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley, with whom he formed the core of the loose group known as the Impressionists. In 1864, he accepted his first commissions, for portraits of his friend Sisley and Sisley’s father, William. He showed for the first time at the Paris Salon in 1864 (
La Esméralda, later destroyed). During this period Renoir was often with Sisley, painting in or near Fontainebleau. By 1869–70, with Camille Pissarro as well, he and his friends were working outdoors on the banks of the Seine. Side by side at Croissy in 1869, Renoir and Monet completed major early Impressionist landscapes, views of a riverside place of entertainment, La Grenouillère (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, NM 2425 and The Met,
29.100.112, respectively). Renoir, Sisley, and Monet often sought support from Bazille, who was independently wealthy, and Renoir shared his studio for several years before Bazille’s death in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. (Renoir was also called up but did not see active service.) Having sent many works to the Impressionist exhibitions of 1874, 1876, and 1877—which were neither well received nor remunerative for any of the participants—he returned to the official venue in search of better prospects. His success at the 1879 Salon with The Met’s
Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children (
07.122) brought him critical notice and portrait commissions.
Renoir reached a high point of his career in 1880–81 with
Luncheon of the Boating Party (The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1637), in which Aline Charigot (1859–1915) made her first appearance. In 1881–82, the artist visited Algeria twice and traveled widely in Italy, studying Renaissance art, especially Raphael and the nude, as well as ancient wall paintings in the museum at Naples. Thereafter, for a time, he deployed a new technique for figures and heads that was smoother and more definitive, but this was poorly received, and he subsequently returned to his previously more successful brushier style. In the early 1880s he also made summer visits to clients in Normandy and in 1883 traveled to the Channel Island of Guernsey to work outdoors. No period in his career was more richly productive. After a decade together and the birth, in 1885, of their son Pierre, Renoir married Aline in 1890; she and the couple’s three sons are often depicted in his later work. The couple bought a house in Aline’s native Essoyes, in the farming country of Champagne, where the youngest, Claude, was born in 1901.
The restless Renoir rented apartments and studios in various locations in Paris. Rheumatoid arthritis, diagnosed in 1888, eventually obliged him to move to the south of France, where in 1907 he and Aline purchased Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-Mer as their principal residence. (It is now owned by the state and houses a museum dedicated to his art.) He continued to travel to Paris by rail and by car. Unable to stand, walk, or pick up a brush (paintbrushes were strapped to his hands), Renoir painted in Cagnes until his death in 1919. Anxious, changeable, secretive, he was also tenacious and gracious, with a gift for friendship demonstrated throughout a long and profitable career. Several thousand Renoir letters shed light on his personal and professional life. It should be noted that each of his sons was gifted in his own right: Pierre (1885–1952), the actor; Jean (1894–1979), the writer and filmmaker; and Claude (1901–1969), the ceramicist.
The Location and its Significance: The picture had been neither exhibited nor published when it was acquired by The Met. In 1979, art historian T. J. Clark verbally identified the subject: a road in Louveciennes looking northwest toward the Marly aqueduct (see memo in archive file, October 23, 1979). Built in the seventeenth century to carry water from the Seine to royal châteaux on higher ground, the aqueduct is visible at the top of the slope in the distance at left. Renoir’s father, who had been a tailor, retired in 1869 and with his family settled in the Seine valley at Voisins by Louveciennes, a short distance from Paris. The artist, who was without financial resources, stayed with them to paint in favorable weather. In spring 1869, Camille Pissarro moved with his wife and children to Louveciennes, and almost immediately—or in the following year—painted a view (
View from Louveciennes, 1869–70, National Gallery, London, NG3265) that shows the aqueduct from roughly the same angle, though not from the same road. Neither work can be dated with precision. Claude Monet was living nearby at Saint-Michel near Bougival, and 1869–70 was a seminal moment for all three of them in the development of Impressionism. However, they were driven apart during the summer of 1870 by the onset of the Franco-Prussian War.
The Picture: Renoir, working outdoors on a bright summer day, set up his easel in a position from which he could depict a structured composition: the roadway, a diagonal from lower right to center left, is set off by two intersecting diagonals in the middle distance. Thickly brushed and light in color with wide gray shadows, the road contrasts with multicolored dabs and flecks in various greens that form a tapestry-like surface, describing the trees and untamed surrounding growth. The artist used liberal applications of pure white for the clouds. Neither Louveciennes nor Voisins is visible in the picture, and the only evidence of habitation is a single cottage. It is generally agreed that the couple with the little girl, all formally dressed, are not residents but visitors, enjoying an outing in the country. The mother carries a small pink parasol and wears a dress and bonnet in the latest fashion. The older woman in black faces in the same direction, and she and the boy in the blue jacket could belong to the same family party. The canvas is unusually small and undated. (It was evidently signed later; see Bailey 2007.) Perhaps it was a private exercise in the new style, not then intended for sale. The joyful mood and fine weather, and the loose freedom of technique afford the work an inherent charm.
Pissarro’s View: When comparing Renoir’s landscape with the better-known work by Pissarro in London, it becomes apparent that the older painter’s style differs in still betraying the influence of Corot and the Barbizon school. Typically for Pissarro, a mood of gravity informs his view of laboring country folk in the spring landscape when the trees are just starting to show their blossoms. A dignified peasant woman in a cap walks on the road; a man drives his horse and cart through a gate leading to a scattering of houses, the village of Voisins. The palette is restrained, the paint surface smoother than Renoir’s. However, when seen closeup, it becomes apparent that Pissarro’s brushwork is more spontaneous rather than carefully descriptive.
Katharine Baetjer 2021; updated 2022
