Late Renoir at Philadelphia Museum of Art on artrepublic.com

80 of the artist’s paintings, sculpture, and drawings will be on view, accompanied by a selection of works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard, and others who were inspired by the master. 

A landmark exhibition, Late Renoir examines new directions that the artist explored several decades after he and others such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro created the new style of painting known as Impressionism. This new and widely admired phase in Renoir’s career propelled him into the modern age and, at the same time, enabled him to recapture a classical past with expressive brushwork and a palette of sensuous colours that were both lyrical and decorative. Late Renoir includes major works on loan from public and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

 Renoir had played an active part in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, presenting his work alongside those of his friends Degas, Monet, Pissaro, Sisley, and Morisot. He began eventually to distance himself from the group however and by the 1880s he embarked upon new avenues of expression, returning after many years to commissioned portraits. Now less interested in capturing the fleeting moments of everyday life, he also began to pursue timeless subjects, especially the theme of the female nude which became more central as he modelled his figures on the postures of classical sculpture. He opened an artistic dialogue with such old masters as Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Fragonard, and Watteau, while employing fluid brushstrokes and a bright palette that was inspired by his move from Paris to the south of France. Many of Renoir’s late works suggest an endless summer in which youthful, Arcadian figures inhabit a world of beauty and grace. This is the focus of the period from 1890 until Renoir’s death in 1919.

The exhibition in Philadelphia will be organized chronologically, enabling the visitor to appreciate the evolution of Renoir’s late style, beginning with portraits and genre scenes and examining his full embrace of the nude and mythological subjects. 

The exhibition in Philadelphia will be organized chronologically, enabling the visitor to appreciate the evolution of Renoir’s late style, beginning with portraits and genre scenes and examining his full embrace of the nude and mythological subjects. 

Several of the works will be seen in Philadelphia only. They include The Guitar Player, 1897 (private collection), which has not been on public view in 90 years or more; Woman Combing Her Hair, 1908 (private collection); Woman Tying Her Shoe, c. 1918 (Courtauld Gallery, London); an exquisite drawing lent by the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; and additional drawings and pastels from the Museum’s collection. A major work not seen at the Paris venue, The Judgment of Paris, 1913-14 (Hiroshima Museum of Art), was recently added in Los Angeles and will also be seen in Philadelphia. Renoir said of this and related works: “the earth was the paradise of the gods . . . that is what I want to paint.”

Other highlights in the exhibition include Two Girls Reading, 1890-91 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), a sensitive and intimate genre study distinguished by warm tonalities and free-flowing brushwork; Girl in a Red Ruff, c. 1896 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), in which a young girl’s profile appears at once affectionate and iconic; the light and amusing Bathers Playing with a Crab, c. 1897 (Cleveland Museum of Art), which has been compared to the work of Boucher and Fragonard, and Gabrielle with a Rose, 1911 (Musee d’Orsay), which treats the theme of the woman at her toilette; Renoir’s frequent model and babysitter for his son Jean is rendered with luminous highlights and a reflective gaze.

OPENING HOURS: Tue – Sun: 10.11 – 17.00

Image Credits:

Woman Playing a Guitar, 1896-97. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919). Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 25 9/16 inches. Framed: 47 7/16 x 41 1/8 x 5 1/2 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.

Terrace in Cagnes, 1905. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919). Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 21 7/8 inches. Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan.

Woman Tying her Shoe, c. 1918. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919). Oil on canvas, 19 7/8 x 22 1/4 inches. Framed: 27 3/4 x 29 15/16 x 3 9/16 inches. Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK.