Episode 12-Renoir, the Sunday Painter

This spring, the Musée d'Orsay is holding two fantastic exhibits dedicated to Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 

Renoir and Love of his paintings and Renoir Dessinateur filled with his drawings, pastels, watercolors, and more. 

In this week's episode, we take a closer look at Renoir's two major paintings, Bal du Moulin de la Galette and The Luncheon of the Boating Party, as well as his trio of dancers united for the first time in decades. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Bonjour, bonjour, and welcome to episode 12 of Paris in Blue Blanc Rouge. Today I wanted to give you a little more insight on the Renoir exhibit that's going on at the Orsay and specifically a deep dive into uh two of the paintings and then a set of three paintings that were my favorite ones to get to see. Um, but these paintings are somewhat well known, especially the two group paintings. And so I want to give you a little bit more story behind it and the figures that are in it because I just absolutely love that. But the exhibit is going on at the Orsay right now, and it goes until July, and I'll tell you some more of give you just the details you know about visiting at the end. And then also I want to tell you about another exhibit that just opened last week here in Paris at the Sister Museum of the Orsay, the Orangerie, and it's a fantastic one that people should see, and it's of artists that not a lot of people will um necessarily know. Um, but today is all about Renoir, and I've decided to call him the Sunday painter because of the pieces that he depicted, that he's really well known for, is always taking place kind of on Sundays. And it was just if you know anything about France, if you spent time here in Paris and or and around France, Sundays are like sacred days, not because of church, but because that's the day where people get together, they have lunch. Um, you know, lunch is a seven or hour, eight-hour affair that, you know, starts with everybody gets together and there's like almost just some snacks and wine, and then hours later you have lunch. Um, and it goes, you know, basically into dinner time. So it's a very uh carefree day, and it was something that he really captured really well, uh, especially in his two most famous paintings, I think. On February 25th, 1841, Pierre Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, France, into a large family. They moved to Paris in 1844 and lived on the Rue de la Bibliothèque, which was just steps away from the Louvre. The street was removed during the construction on the Rue de Rivalie, where the Fondayon Cartier is today. At just thirteen, he entered the La Veille Frere Porcelain Company as an apprentice, learning to paint tiny floral elements on porcelain to help support his family. In the evening he took free drawing lessons from sculptor Louis Denis Caillette. He'd go on to paint fans and window blinds and work with his brother Henri, who painted heralded coat of arms. Throughout his adolescence, he also took singing and music lessons and once thought that would be his creative direction, but as we know it was not. In eighteen sixty he entered the Musee de Louvre as a copyist, where he was drawn to Renoir, Vateau, and Boucher, artists who would have a major impact on his future as an impressionist. I'm often asked what time in history I would want to travel back to, and I think it would be the 19th century, and of course to be inside the Louvre when Manet, Morisseau, Monet, Degas, Sicily, and Renoir would spend their days in there copying the masters as they perfected their own technique. In 1843, the Swiss artist Charles Greyer taught classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and opened his own studio on the Rue de Vaugirard, blocks from the Jardin de Luxembourg. In 1861, Renoir walked through his door and met fellow artists Claude Monet, Frederic Basile, and Alfred Sicily. Renoir and Sicily ventured out to the forests of Fontainebleau, painting landscapes, but unlike his fellow future impressionists, he didn't take to the countrysides and en plein air painting. A close friendship with Claude Monet led the two artists to paint together, including portraits of each other. A Renoir portrait of Monet is often on display on the fifth floor of the Orsay. Renoir's first submission to the academic salon was in 1863 and was quickly rejected, as were most of the soon-to-be Impressionists. The same year, the artist's complaints reached Napoleon III, who commissioned a new exhibition, the Salon de Refuse, in 1864, accepted to the Salon from his painting Esmeralda from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. Immediately after the exhibition, he destroyed it as it was critically panned. In 1865, the jurists of the Salon relaxed the rules and accepted a few more of the Impressionists, including Manet's Olympia and Renoir's portraits of Madame MWS and Summer Evening. In 1868, he exhibited in the Salon at the Musee de Louvre, Lise with a Parasol, appeared but brought him very little recognition. After a decade of strife, the famed Salon began to fight back against the Impressionists, and in response they banded together to create their own show, the Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. On December 27, 1873, Renoir and his fellow snubbed artists met for the first time to organize an exhibit of their work. The Anonymous Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, etc., was a group of artists who were being turned away from the official salon. In the spring, the first exhibition of the artist would be held at 35 Boulevard de Capacine in the former studio of the photographer Nadar. On April 15, 1874, 31 artists exhibited, including Renoir, Monet, Descas, Pizarro, Sisley, Cézanne, and Bert Morisseau, but not Manet. The exhibition ran for one month, concluding on May 15th, and 3,510 visitors mostly visited to make fun of the event. Renoir exhibited six paintings and a pastel, including The Dancer and La Parisienne, that opened the exhibit. Both figures are seen head to toe, something Renoir rarely did in his portraits. Renoir was one of the few artists who continued to participate and be accepted at the academic salon and the impressionist exhibits. The early years spent in the Louvre influenced his paintings and resurrected the Galantier style of the Rococo period. Growing up during the reign of Napoleon III as president, then emperor, and the extravagance of the Second Empire led to the siege of Prussia and the Commune that brought incredible hardship for everyone. On August 26, 1870, Renoir was drafted into the 10th Regiment of the French army in the Franco-Prussian War, serving until March 10th, 1871. Following the fall of Napoleon III in the bloody week of the Commune in May 1871, Paris slowly crawled out of the darkness into the Belle Epoque. Everything began to change. Parisians returned to the cafes and the music halls once again. There was a lightness to the city and the social rules began to relax. The year 1876 was a few years into what we call the Belle Epoque, the beautiful era, the gayest of times in Paris. Woody Allen's midnight in Paris depicts a period at Maxim's with Gauguin and Toulouse Latrec living it up at a can can. Traveling back to that night, Adriana says it was the best time to be in Paris and she wanted to stay. One hundred and fifty years ago in the spring of eighteen seventy six, Renoir rented a house on the slope of the Bout Montmartre behind Sacre Cur on the Rue Corteux. Today it is the Musee de Montmart and you can visit and step right into one of his most famous paintings, the Balance, which means a swing. It was painted in the Jardin Renoir and the swing still hangs on the tree that he used to paint. The location was chosen by the artist for its proximity to the Moulin de la Galette, again yet just five minutes away. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the hill of Montmart outside the city of Paris was covered with more than thirty windmills used to grind flour, pepper, and spices. As early as sixteen twenty two on the Rue Le Pique that snakes up the hill, two windmills sat. The Bluefin and the Radais. In eighteen oh nine, the de Bray family purchased a plot of land that stretched a few blocks further than the restaurant sits today. The Radais windmill, which still stands today, has been in many places on the hill. It was dismantled and moved a few times, including once by the Debay family, who moved it into a garden and again in 1924 when it became nothing more than a decoration installed on the roof of the restaurant. Head down Rue Le Pique a few doors and you will find a white stone wall that holds back the lush green trees and bushes. Rarely open to the public, the garden hides the Moulin Bluffin inside and shows how far the guignette stretched and was filled with artists and working class residents of Montmartre on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Nicolas Charles Dubray turned the slightly run down location into the Balda Bray in 1833. Each Sunday afternoon, people would gather and eat small cakes made from the flower of the mill with a glass of donkey milk. The attraction became quite popular, featuring music and dance lessons, and the milk eventually gave way to the wine made nearby. A platform was built by the Moulin Bluffin, where they could even take in all of Paris while listening to the music below. Only open on Sundays and public holidays, everyone from Van Gogh to Toulouse Le Trek and the dancers of the Moulin Rouge could be found. The weekly event was a break from the once rigid rules of society. Women were now seen dancing with men they weren't married to and even arrived on their own. Something they couldn't do on the streets of Paris. A new free love and a new way for people to meet were beginning to emerge in Paris and would find its way onto the canvas of Renoir. Many had painted the famous windmill, including Vincent Van Gogh and Maurice Outriot, but Renoir captured a different view without the blades. In his young formative years, Renoir often visited the largest painting in the Louvre by Vernese, the wedding feast at Cana. Painted in 1563, Vernese filled the large canvas with as many figures as possible against an architectural background. Of the more than 130 figures, we see Christ in the center, but Vernese purposely didn't leave a legend of the who's who. It was also the paintings of Vateau who captures the scene of the fet gallants of the Rococo period of excess and pleasure under the Regency and later Louis XV. The famous voyage to Sitera, painted by Vateau in 1717, combined with the idea of the wedding feast rooted in idea inside a Renoir. In the late spring of 1876, Renoir set up a canvas and an easel on a staircase overlooking the garden under the Moulin and painted a scene of his friends enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon. The current exhibit of the Orse, which just opened on March 17th, has done a great job sharing more insight on three of his group paintings. In the Bal de Moulin de la Galette, he captures a sunny Sunday afternoon gathering of his fellow artists enjoying a day of drinks, dances, and dancers as far as you could see. Models Margot and Jean, who also posed for the swing, and her sister Estelle in a blue striped dress modeled for the numerous female figures. For the many male figures, artists Georges Riviere, Henri Gervais, Franck Lamy, and Norbay Gognier were also posed for the swing. Journalist, close friend, and frequent model Paul Lot, as well as Pierre Huguen Lestonier, all stand out in this masterpiece by Renoir. Look closely at the main figures, Renoir purposely connected them to each other through a glance or a touch. In 1879, his brother Edmund said that Auguste would settle down there for six months, building relationships with all the people of his little world and their unique style. He will convey it in frenzied motion with dazzling energy. Renoir showed it at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, number 186 in the catalog, received a lukewarm reception. Later that same year, wealthy artist friend and supporter of the Impressionist Gustave Caybot purchased the painting and kept in his studio until his death in 1894, when his collection, or at least part of it, was accepted by the French state. A recent acquisition of the Orsay is a self-portrait of Caibote, painted in 1879, includes a partial view of the Moulin painting in the background. The painting stayed with the family of Cuba and sold at auction in 1986. With his friend Claude Monet, Renoir would often visit the many lakes, ponds, and rivers that surrounded Paris. His impressionist friends would paint the scenery devoid of people, while he liked to imagine the banks of the Seine or an island filled with people enjoying a lazy afternoon. In the eighteen seventies he discovered Chateau, a small town west of Paris across the river from the Rue Mamaison, with a small island that sits in the Seine. In 1837, the train line from Paris extended out to Chateau from the Guerre Saint Lazare, opening the area to boating enthusiasts and artists. Between 1875 and 1881, Renoir produced 30 paintings, including his most famous, The Luncheon of the Boating Party. In 1857, Alphonse Fournaz struck while the iron was hot and bought a small building on the island we know today as the Island of the Impressionists, to build and rent boats from. Over the years he added to the house, including a restaurant and hotel with the help of his wife and children. Renoir discovered the island and wrote to friends saying it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen, frequently staying at the Fournaz hotel and bringing friends to model for him, including the entire Fournaz family. The balcony of the restaurant with its tomato red and white striped awning was added in 1877 and immortalized in Renoir's painting. The well known scene of the figures followed the end of a long, leisurely Sunday lunch. Unlike the Moulin de la Galette, Renoir had not set up his canvas on the balcony for endless days, forcing all these figures to hold the same pose. Instead, it was pieced together one figure at a time, and we would never know that by looking at it. Leaning on the railing are the owner's two children, Alphonse Junior and Alphonsine Fornaz. Eileen Charigot, model and future wife of Renoir, plays with a dog at the table with model Eileen Andre and a man who could possibly be Gustave Caibot, while journalist Edrienne Majelot leans over rather closely. Seated at the table behind with his back to the viewer is Raoul Baron Barbier and the model Angel. Standing above left to right are the poet and art critic Jules Laforge and Charles Afrozet, a wealthy banker, collector, and supporter of Renoir who commissioned many paintings, including one of his daughters stolen by the Nazis in World War II with quite a story of its own. There are a few familiar characters that have also posed in the Moulin painting, including Pierre Lestrangier, Paul Lot, and Jean Samary. Again, he creates a group within the piece that interacts with each other, giving it a very realistic look of an afterlunch gathering and perhaps a few bottles of rose. The painting was purchased on February 14, 1881 by Paul Durant Rouel and featured at the seventh Impressionist exhibition in March 1882. It remained with Durant Rouel until his death in 1922 and was purchased the next year by Duncan Phillips and is held in the Phillips collection in Washington, D.C. Boating excursions took a hit at the advent of the bicycle at the end of the nineteenth century, drastically damaging the Fournace business. The restaurant was closed in 1905, and after the death of Alphonse in 1937, the property was split into rental units and fell into disrepair. The city of Chateau stepped in and purchased the building in 1979, saving it from destruction and continuing its heritage. You could visit the fantastic restaurant at the Maison Fournaise on the Island of the Impressionists, sit on the balcony and see the same view that has barely changed in 146 years. Take a walk into the beautiful blooming wisteria and find a handful of plaques placed in the same location where Renoir once painted, including a rendition of the piece, many of which are on display at this exhibit. Most visitors are excited to see the boating party, which rarely leaves DC, but the one I had to find as soon as I walked in on my first visit was the third of Renoir's trio of paintings painted in 1883, known as the Dances. I was first drawn to these paintings after researching Suzanne Valadin's life many years ago. The model turned artist who had quite a time in Montmart, modeling for Toulouse Lautrec, Jean-Jacques Ennard, Bert Morisseau, and Theophile Stella, to name a few, and an even lengthier list of lovers. She first met Renoir in 1882 in Montmart. The two would spend endless days in his apartment on Rue Saint Georges, and there might have been even a little bit of a romantic involvement. Renoir imagined these three life-size paintings featuring two figures dancing in different settings, inspired by his own Moulin de la Galette painted six years earlier. Suzanne was originally going to pose for all three, but there was a bit of a disagreement with Eileen, the then mistress but future wife of Renoir. In the very elegant dance in the city, Suzanne's back is turned to us, showing the details of her beautiful billowy white dress. The very formal setting of a high society event includes only the couple, unlike the more informal paintings in the series. Paul Lot, a close friend of Renoir, also appears in each of the group paintings I shared, posing as a tall gentleman whose face is hidden. Two of these paintings are held in the permanent collection at the Orsay, The Dance in the City and The Dance in the Country. In the country are female dancers looking out and appears more engaged with someone in the distance. Renoir wasn't known for his dancing abilities, but his mistress Eileen loved to dance under the trees at the many guignettes of Paris. Jean Renoir recalls a story his father once told him about watching her dance for hours and it brought him true happiness. In the dance in the country, which looks like it was straight out of the Moulin de la Galette, Eileen dances with the model Paul Lot again, revealing a bit more of his face. The two appear to have just finished their lunch on a balcony where the music sweeps him into a dance. His straw hat is discarded on the floor and a female figure watches from below. The third painting in the series, the dance at Bougival, was first called the Dance at Chateau before it was displayed, and it now lives in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts. It has always been my dream to see these three together, and that dream came true with this exhibit. The dance at Bougival was the last to be done and missed the exhibition at the Duran Ruel Gallery in April 1883. The couple are captured mid spin and held tightly together while others behind them enjoy a chat, drink, and a smoke on a warm autumn day. The female figure is a bit of both of Suzanne and Eileen combined, and the male figure is thought to be Alphonse Fornez Jr. Take a look back at the boating party at the figure on the railing. The two both share the same reddish beard. The yellow straw hat we saw discarded in the dance in the country is now on the male dancer's head. Eileen was a bit fed up with lovely Suzanne in the studio for days and weeks on end, and one day walked in and attacked the painting, almost destroying it. Renoir had to recreate much of it and change the face to look a little less like Suzanne. The fantastic exhibit held at the Musee d'Orsay this year, dedicated to Renoir and Love, features the paintings I mentioned and is wonderful. However, do not miss the second exhibit dedicated to drawings. Of the three dances, Renoir only sketched out one of them, Dance in the Country. Many variations of Loth's hair and Eileen's face were made with the smallest changes. In November 1883, Renoir recreated the dance in Bougevelle for Paul Lot's story Mademoiselle Zela in La Vie Moderne magazine, with slight changes to the figure. Many of the graphite drawings and the actual printing of Mademoiselle Zela are on display, and I urge you not to skip over it. The drawing exhibit is even better than the paintings exhibit. Over the last few years, Renoir has become a bit of a lightning rod for attacks, and not for the usual reasons people have strong feelings against the artists. Of my friends in all the levels of the art world, most don't like Renoir, and it's a feeling that is shared by many. One just needs to walk through the fifth floor of the Orsay and see how the Renoir jump out at you, and they don't seem to blend in with the other impressionists. He later took a real dislike to that term and being associated with them, but that also isn't normally the reason people don't like him. Most feel he is overrated and others feel he was a sellout. In 2015, a group picketed outside the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with very clever signs of Renoir sucks at painting and demanding that Renoir be removed. It was spearheaded by an activist who was outraged after visiting the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, which is also the single largest collection of Renoir. Renoir was greatly inspired by Fragonar and Rococo paintings of the 18th century. When you study the two periods, you could see that. Impressionism, in its creation, was a impression of a view created by a rogue band of artists that Renoir never fit into. While some renoirs may not be my favorite painting, I do appreciate them and their place in history. But I also love the Rococo movement. I have heard of guides telling their clients not to even bother looking at his paintings in the Orsay because they are horrible. Art is subjective, and what I love is not what you might love, and that is the beauty of it. But I don't think professionals should be shoving their own thoughts down people's throats in a way that they don't even allow them to look at it or feel ashamed to even like his paintings. Now there is another side of Renoir that I do have an issue with. Renoir painted over 4,000 paintings in his lifetime, many of which were portraits commissioned by wealthy families, often Jewish families. Between 1894 and 1906, all of France was swept up in the Dreyfus affair, dividing many artists into two camps, those that supported Dreyfus and those who were against him. Monet and Pissero were strongly in the camp supporting Dreyfus, with Degas being as far anti Dreyfus as one could get. As for Renoir, his son, Jean Renoir, claimed in his book that his father wanted to stay in the middle. I'm just a Frenchman, he said. Julie Manet, daughter of Bert Morissot and niece of Edward Manet, noted a different version in her diaries that you can read today. She mentions many things about Renoir that were very anti Semitic, too horrible to even say, and even her own views later started to bend towards his thinking. Her future father-in-law, Henri Rouard, would also stand on the side of those opposed Dreyfus, but the most outspoken was Degas and he took it to his grave. Renoir's views would work against him. He wanted the commission and the money of Jewish collectors, but didn't want to mingle with or be associated with them. Although he does capture one of his best clients in his boating party. Renoir is back in the news again after a brazen theft in Italy occurred on March 22nd, just last week. Four mass men entered the Villa Magini Rocca Foundation near Parma, Italy. In the dark of night, and in under three minutes, the thieves stole three paintings. Renoir's The Fishes, painted in 1917, Matisse's Odolisk on the Terrace, 1922, and Cezanne's Still Life of Cherries, 1885 to 1887. Hopefully they will be found and returned soon. The Orsay Renoir exhibits Renoir and Love goes until July 19th and the drawings until July 5th. And you really need to see them. You can book a separate time ticket to the Renoir exhibit, and I do definitely recommend that if you're coming in the peak season of the summer. But so far I've been a few times. So far, the line is not uh too bad to get in, and you could pretty much just walk right in. But if you're going, you might as well just book the time ticket just to be safe. The drawings exhibits will definitely get less people uh walking in there. It's just down the way past the paintings exhibit. But honestly, like I said, yeah, I think it's actually better than the painting exhibit. It's so great. But there was another exhibit that's just opened last week, uh last Tuesday, at um which I might have already mentioned last week, but it was at the Orangerie and the Henri Rousseau exhibit. He was a self-taught artist in the late 19th and 20th century, and he spent his days as a tax collector on the edge of Paris. Um it is he was self-taught and is just a fantastic exhibit. He was kind of later discovered by Picasso, who threw a big party for him in the fall of 1908 at the Bateau L'Avoire, his studio there in Montmartre. And it was kind of like the big party of Paris in like the last 200 years. So it's a fantastic exhibit. Just looking at the paintings that he does just makes me happy. Um, and so it's definitely one you want to see. The orangerie, um, for some reason, it which it's great because it's a fantastic museum, but it the line for it is always quite long. Um, it is a big one with tourists, I think mostly because of the big water lilies. Um, not as many probably are going down to this exhibit, but it's such a fantastic museum. It's it's easy to do in a short amount of time. But if you can definitely book your ticket for that in advance. They used to have a way that you could book a double ticket, a ticket for the orsay and the orangerie, but that has gone away unless you buy it there on site. Um, but you could also just become a member and it's fantastic because you could go into the orsay before it opens. They don't let you do that, the orangerie, but it does bypass the line if you're a member. So make sure if you're coming to Paris to check the Orsay out for this fantastic exhibit about Renoir. And I will have more for you next week from wonderful Paris and all the fun things I get to see and share with you in the history of Paris. A biento.