In summer

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In summer (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
In summer
Pierre-Auguste Renoir , 1868
Oil on canvas
85 × 59 cm
Old National Gallery, Berlin

In summer ( French En été ) is the title of a painting by the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1868 . The 85 × 59 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows the knee-length portrait of his twenty-year-old lover Lise Tréhot . Influenced by the romantic works of Eugène Delacroix and the realism of Gustave Courbet , this painting, part of Renoir's early work, marks the transition from the artist's traditional studio painting to his later, independent impressionist style of painting. The painting In Summer is in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin .

Image description

The painting shows the knee-length portrait of a young woman. She is sitting on a chair whose round back and armrests are visible on the left edge of the picture. To the right of the sitter is an ocher-colored parapet that separates the foreground from the background. The young woman is shown in frontal view. She wears a white skirt with reddish black stripes and a white bodice . While the left strap of this bodice is at the very edge of the shoulder, the right strap has slipped far down onto the right upper arm, exposing a large part of the cleavage . The young woman's long, slightly curly black hair falls over her shoulders to the beginning of the skirt, thus framing the base of the chest. The hair on the head is held together by a narrow red ribbon. Another piece of jewelry is a small gold earring on the right ear. Although the young woman's dark eyes are directed forward, the gaze does not go to the viewer, but is directed slightly to the right. This look gives the face a "sleepy, absent expression". The young woman has placed her forearms in her lap, with the left hand clasping the right wrist. In her right hand she is holding a few green leaves, which may have come from the tree in the background and thus connect the foreground with the background. The dark trunk of this tree can be seen to the right of the girl. The rest of the background of the picture is taken up by the fleetingly sketched foliage, which art historians describe as "ornamentally stylized foil" or as "more than a backdrop, than a faithful reproduction of nature". In the gaps in the foliage, white spots indicate sunlight. No lighting can be seen for the foreground of the picture. Only a few white spots in the area of ​​the décolleté and on the arms indicate light reflections. The painting is signed A. Renoir in the lower left area of ​​the chair back .

In this picture, Renoir worked with numerous contrasts. The straight lines of the parapet and the tree trunk on the right-hand side repeat the edges of the picture and contrast with the round shapes of the chair on the left-hand side. The hair is arranged on the head by the red ribbon and falls randomly over the chest. The black hair color contrasts with the light skin and the white bodice. There is also a clear contrast between the finely executed painting of the foreground and the background sketched with rough brushstrokes. The lively elements of the background and the disordered hair find their counterpart in the calm posture of the young woman and in her facial expression.

Renoir did not only provide information about the season of the painting's creation with the picture title In Summer . The strong green of the foliage and the "glistening light" of the background also indicate a midsummer day. This is also supported by the light and casual clothing of the depicted. For the author Sophie Monneret, “the absent look, the drooping shoulders” and “the feverish cheeks reveal the oppressive mood of a hot day”. The same author also points out that the girl's expression and posture may be due to “a session that was too long for the model”. For Monneret, Renoir wanted to “create the feeling of summer sultry”.

role models

Role models for Renoirs Summer has existed in French painting since the 18th century. For example, Jean-Baptiste Greuze has similar depictions of young women. The motif similarity to works by Eugène Delacroix is ​​clearer, whose young orphan girl in the cemetery anticipates the deranged bodice of the young woman in the painting In Summer . In his early years, Renoir particularly admired Gustave Courbet, whom he had met in 1865 while painting in the Fontainebleau forest . Art historians see models for the painting In Summer , in which Renoir also portrayed his lover, in his Girl with Seagulls and the portrait of his lover Joanna Hifferan in La Belle Irlandaise . At the time the painting was made, Renoir was close friends with his painter colleague Frédéric Bazille , with whom he also lived for a time. In the works of both painters from the late 1860s there are repeated depictions of clothing with fashionable stripes. So the stripe pattern in the dress of the girl in Bazille's paintings Dorfansicht view as well as in Lise's Rock in Renoir's paintings. Both pictures were created in 1868 and exhibited in the Salon de Paris from 1869.

  • Jean-Baptiste Greuze:
    Portrait of a Young Girl
    around 1770–1780

  • Eugène Delacroix:
    Young Orphan Girl in the Cemetery
    1823

  • Gustave Courbet:
    Girl with Seagulls
    1865

  • Gustave Courbet:
    Jo, La Belle Irlandaise
    around 1865–1866

  • Frédéric Bazille:
    View of the village
    1868

Lise Tréhot

Black and white photo by Lise Tréhot
Lise Tréhot, photo from 1864

The young woman portrayed is the twenty-year-old Lise Tréhot. Renoir probably met her through his friend Jules Le Coeur, who had a relationship with Tréhot's sister Clémence. Lise Tréhot was Renoir's lover from around 1865 and was the model for more than 20 of his figure paintings. This includes all the large-format pictures that Renoir exhibited in the salon during his relationship with Lise. In 1868 Renoir presented the full-length picture Lise (now known as Lise with the parasol ) in the salon , where it attracted great attention. This success may have prompted Renoir to paint a portrait of Lise Tréhot again that same year with In Summer . It is Renoir's only solo portrait of her from that year and the only picture that he submitted to the Salon of 1869.

For the painting In Summer , in addition to the name En été, the image titles La bohémienne (German: The Gypsy ) and Lise are used in French literature , a name that is also used for the painting Lise with the parasol . In German-language literature, the painting is usually titled as In Summer or with Summer . However, here too there are occasional names such as Die Bohémienne and Lise .

In addition to the portrayal as a fashionable Parisian in the painting Lise, Renoir painted his lover in very different roles. In 1867 the painting was created with the motif of Diana , the goddess of the hunt , in which Lise posed as a nude model. In the so-called married couple Sisley in 1868 she took on the role of a wife at the side of the painter Alfred Sisley and two years later Lise Tréhot slipped into an oriental costume for the painting Odalisque . In 1872 the relationship between Lise Tréhot and Renoir ended and she never again modeled a painter.

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    Lise or Lise with the parasol
    1867

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    Diana as a huntress
    1867

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    The Sisley couple
    1868

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    Odalisque
    1870

Classification in the overall work

Renoir was 27 years old when the painting was created and had completed his training in the studio of the painter Charles Gleyre four years earlier . Nevertheless, in 1868 he still referred to himself as a student of Gleyre. In order to gain recognition as a painter, Renoir submitted paintings to the Salon de Paris from 1863. However, the salon jury of 1863 rejected his painting Nymph and Faun , whereupon Renoir destroyed the painting. The painting Esmeralda was accepted by the salon jury in 1864, but did not bring the desired success. After the exhibition, Renoir also destroyed this painting. The two paintings that Renoir was able to show in the salon the following year again did not get the desired response. After two years in which his works did not give him access to the salon, the Lise 1868 finally got the desired attention from the critics. However, there was no commercial success and Renoir continued to live under very tight financial circumstances. He hated to “play the martyr” and therefore thought so like many painters who presented the salon jury with “tame works”.

Painting "The Walk" by Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
The Walk , 1870

Renoir submitted the painting to the Salon in the summer of 1869, where it was exhibited under catalog number 2021 with the title En été, étude (German: In the summer, study ). It is presumed that Renoir chose the addition study to justify the impressionistically relaxed painting style of the picture background. His fears of being rejected by the salon's jury were based on the rejection of Claude Monet's well-known painting Women in the Garden , which was not allowed to enter the salon in 1867 due to the way it was painted. With the more traditional painting style in the foreground of the picture, however, Renoir tried to convince the more conservative, traditional salon jury and the critics of the painting Im Sommer . He also hoped to improve his financial situation through a lucrative sale of the painting. However, the picture did not attract any attention from the critics, which may be due to the unfavorable hanging caused by the salon jury.

After Renoir had completely painted the picture Lise in the great outdoors, the painting In Summer was created entirely in the studio. In the painting In Summer Renoir emphasized the contours of the portrayed Lise Tréhot so that her figure appears sharply outlined and three-dimensional. The art historian Douglas Cooper speaks of photographic accuracy in this context. The sunlight in the background does not reach the sitter, which means that artificial studio light predominates in the foreground. Two years later, Renoir eliminated this contrast in his painting The Walk by integrating the figures into the landscape and working with colored instead of dark shadows. While the diffuse light of the foreground of the picture in In Summer does not yet establish a connection between the figure and its surroundings, the people are embedded in the landscape in the walk through light treatment and uniform brushwork. In the summer , Renoir's oeuvre marks the transition from the techniques he learned in Gleyre's studio to his later independent style of painting. For the author Monneret, in the summer of "implementing the atmospheric conditions", "one of the main concerns of Impressionism begins to come to light."

Provenance

It is not known when, to whom and for what price Renoir sold the painting in the summer . In March 1873, the art writer Théodore Duret bought the picture for 400 francs from an art dealer not known by name in Paris' Rue La Bruyère. The painting then came to the collection of François Depeaux (1853–1920) in Rouen . At the second auction of the Depeaux collection (due to his divorce; first auction 1901) on May 31 and June 1, 1906 in the Paris gallery Georges Petit, the art dealers Bernheim-Jeune , Durand-Ruel and Paul Rosenberg jointly auctioned the picture for 4,500 francs . Through the mediation of the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer , the museum director Hugo von Tschudi acquired Renoirs Im Sommer for the National Gallery in Berlin in November of the same year . Since Tschudi had to get permission to purchase paintings from Kaiser Wilhelm II and was opposed to this contemporary art from France, he tried to build up a collection of Impressionist works through donations from progressive collectors and patrons. In June 1907 he found Mathilde Kappel, wife of the banker Marcus Kappel , a generous donor who financed the purchase amount of 8,000 marks . Since then, the painting Im Sommer has been in the collection of the Nationalgalerie as a gift from Mathilde Kappel .

The painting initially hung in the main building of the National Gallery on Museum Island before it was exhibited in the New Department of the National Gallery in Berlin in the Kronprinzenpalais in 1919 . After the Nationalgalerie's holdings were relocated during World War II, Im Sommer was one of the works that ended up in the western part of Berlin after the war. There the picture was first shown in the orangery of Charlottenburg Palace and from 1968 in the Neue Nationalgalerie in the Kulturforum . After German reunification and the merging of the separate museum holdings in East and West, the painting was returned to the building of the Alte Nationalgalerie.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Sophie Monneret: Renoir. 1995, p. 29.
  2. ↑ a b c d Eve Förschl in Angelika Wesenberg and Eve Förschl: National Gallery Berlin. P. 335.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Claude Keisch in Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern and Peter-Klaus Schuster (eds.): Manet to van Gogh. P. 108.
  4. ^ Götz Adriani: Renoir. P. 78.
  5. ^ Henry Loyrette: Origins of Impressionism .. p. 454, analogous transfer of the English catalog text.
  6. ↑ a b c Sophie Monneret: Renoir , 1995, p. 28.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Anne Distel: Renoir. P. 188.
  8. ^ Anne Distel: Renoir. P. 295.
  9. ^ A b Dorothee Hansen: Monet and Camille p. 104.
  10. ^ A b Douglas Cooper: Renoir, Lise, and the Le Coeur Family. P. 168.
  11. ^ A b Sophie Monneret: Renoir , 1990, p. 32.
  12. ^ Sophie Monneret: Renoir , 1990, p. 6.
  13. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. P. 142.
  14. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. P. 139.
  15. ^ Dorothee Hansen: Monet and Camille. P. 143.
  16. ^ Marc-Henri Tellier: François Depeaux. Le charbonnier et les impressionnistes. Rouen 2010.
  17. ^ François Daulte: Auguste Renoir, catalog raisonné de l'œuvre peint. Volume I, No. 33.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on February 15, 2008 in this version .