Renoir in the 20th Century

Softcover
440 pages, 12 ¼ x 9 ¼ in.
213 color + 106 b/w illus.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2010
Softcover ISBN 9783775725392

The exhibition and catalogue are devoted to the glorious final three decades of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)—the decades in which the painter turned away from Impressionism and toward a more decorative approach informed by his own idiosyncratic interpretation of art history. During this period, Renoir was initially looking at painters such as Rubens, Titian, and Raphael, and dedicating himself to cheery subjects such as bathers, domestic idylls, and landscapes that were influenced by both classical mythology and by his relocation to the South of France. The thinly brushed color and blurry outlines in later works such as the Odalisques and the Bathers of 1918–19 (a picture that Renoir described as “a springboard for future research”), were much admired by an up-and-coming generation of avant-garde artists, who gravitated to their sensuality and to the fleshy richness of his nudes, qualities which have made his art so hugely popular and so widely reproduced. In the wealth of color illustrations in this book—which accompanies the major touring exhibition organized by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art—it is possible to see clearly the influence that Renoir had on younger artists such as Bonnard, Matisse, and Picasso, as well as how they received and studied his work. Along with Monet and Sisley, Renoir was a founder of the style that became known as Impressionism, and one of its most prolific members. Surviving most of his contemporaries, he lived to see his paintings hung at the Louvre alongside the historical painters he so revered.

Roger Benjamin is a research professor in the history of art at the University of Sydney. Guy Cogeval is the président de l’établissement public at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Claudia Einecke is the associate curator of European painting and sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Isabelle Gaëtan is the officer of documentary studies at the Musée d’Orsay. Emmanuelle Héran is a curator and deputy administrator of the RMN in charge of the science policy. John House is the Walter H. Annenbreg Professor at the Courtauld Institute in London. Virgine Journiac is a conservator at the Musées de Cagnes-sur-Mer. Martha Lucy is associate curator of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. Laurence Madeline is a curator at the Musée d’Orsay. Monique Nonne is the officer of documentary studies emeritus. Sylvie Patry is a curator at the Musée d’Orsay.