This little-known nude likely dates from Renoir’s early career. While its fine, liquid brushwork suggests the first stirrings of Impressionism, a dark brown preparation layer and an insistent realism in the treatment of anatomy point to Gustave Courbet and the 1860s. A weightless wisp of drapery (or cloud) looks still further into the past, to the eighteenth-century goddesses of François Boucher, Renoir’s favorite painter in the Louvre.
Details
- Artist Name: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919)
- Title: Nude
- Date: c.1872
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 14-3/4 x 10 in. (37.5 x 25.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation, Gift of Mr. Norton Simon
- Accession Number: F.1982.1.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Mrs. Othon Friesz, sold 24 April 1957 to;
[Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, stock no. 5695, offered 12 March 1959 and subsequently sold 15 March 1962 to];
Norton Simon, gift 1982 to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Special Exhibition for the College Art Association (Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon Collection)
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1965-01-18 to 1965-04-16
- Daulte, François, Auguste Renoir: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1971, no. 81
- Fouchet, Max-Pol, Les nus de Renoir, 1974,
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 132
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Dauberville, Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Renoir: Catalogue Raisonné des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins et Aquarelles, 2007, cat. 586 p. 565
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 106 p. 257
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