AUGUSTE RENOIR
RENOIR is admired by almost all schools of taste, both conservative and radical, and naturally each school endeavours to claim him as its own. The impressionists, for instance, emphasise his adoption of the impressionist palette, his studies in the manner of Monet and Pisarro, his general preoccupation with atmosphere and sunlight; the anti-impressionists point out his deviation from the stippled technique, with its juxtaposition of the colours of the spectrum, his increasing interest in form and composition as contrasted with atmosphere, and his own disclaimer of adherence to the naturalistic principle: "Avec la Nature on fait ce qu'on veut et on aboutit necessairement a l'isolement. Moi, je reste dans le rang"; also the famous reply to the question, where one should learn painting: "Au musée, parbleu!"
The reflections upon art of even the greatest artist are not necessarily correct, and though an artist preaches one theory he may actually practise another. Nor are these brief and pithy utterances of Renoir's altogether unambiguous. In order to appreciate the real meaning of any statement of theory it is necessary to bear in mind the opposite view which it is combating. We cannot infer from Renoir's objection to the indiscriminate realism of the later impressionist doctrine that he was in favour of Cubism, for Cubism was not at the time under discussion. Nor does his reference of students to the old masters (au musée) imply in the least that he would abolish painting from nature. There is, in fact, not the slightest need to read into Renoir's simple, somewhat irritated replies any abstruse semi-metaphysical meaning. They will bear a very normal interpretation, which seems to me to be not only the true one, but also the truth. Renoir did not believe in the chaotic and uninspired painting of anything and everything, nor in the pretended complete severance with tradition and the past. He knew that the study of the old masters had assisted him in giving expression to his emotion, and he left the matter at that. Actually all his life long he painted from nature, and it is said that he hardly ever worked without a model. Indeed many of the intellectualists have been compelled to class Renoir as a "naïf," who was content with the unmediated charms of the external world, and never aspired to more deliberate abstract construction.
The Meaning of Impressionism
This distinction, however, between the realistic impressionist (Monet), the naïf (Renoir and the douanier Rousseau), and the intellectually constructive artist, such as Cézanne, is apt to be thoroughly misleading. It is true that the theory of impressionism, in its later developments, was a scientific formula calculated to fetter rather than help the artist, but it does not follow, nor is it by any means true, that Monet and Pisarro were not sometimes very fine artists. They elaborated a style which expressed admirably their own brisk and vivacious sentiment, and the result was neither photographic nor discontinuous with the past. Surely nothing but prejudice and the new pedantry of hybrid abstract design could deny æsthetic value to Monet's "Gare St. Lazare," and Pisarro's "Red Roofs," in the Luxembourg. Often, however, Monet's work is distinctly laboured and only differentiated from a photograph by the worried surface of the paint. He is more monotonous and uninspired than his contemporaries, but he is none the less the author of some remarkably good prose descriptions.
In short, impressionism has come to stand for two quite distinct things: one a genuine attempt to articulate an emotion connected with light and atmosphere, the other a scientific theory of colour and light. With the latter, few of the important impressionists were concerned. Seurat is the only one who seems to have been influenced to any noticeable extent and yet to have remained an artist. But with the former the whole group were more or less concerned, including Renoir and Cézanne. They all revolted from the old sombre colours, expressive of the worship of hoary antiquity, and astonished their contemporaries by plunging into the brightness of the present. Their different modes of reacting to this general tendency were the natural result of eminently desirable differences in temperament. This is the essence of the divergence between, say, Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne. For the very reason that they each possessed a personal vision their work differed, both technically and in its content. It simply is a misrepresentation to say that Cézanne indulged in Cubist deformations. To quote a biographer of Cézanne:—"Ce sont ses disciples, ses plagiaires qui raconte qu'il deforme. Ses deformations, que des cuistres voient si bien, eux qui ne sont pas peintres, ce sont des gestes, des attitudes, des contours vrais pour Cézanne. Il ne voyait pas autrement."
Of course it is possible to soak oneself in Cézanne to such an extent that almost everything else will seem uninteresting. But this is not a magnetism peculiar to Cézanne; it is common to all artists of any comprehensive range, not excepting Renoir. Pass quickly after enjoying a collection of Renoir's completest and most lucid work to some of Cézanne's paintings. Most probably they will appear wooden and unattractive. But this will be a psychological illusion, due to a sudden contrast and the fact that the whole of one's emotional consciousness has been shaped to a certain form, and will not immediately reshape itself. Our minds at any single moment are unable to contain more than a few powerful conceptions and impressions, and there must therefore be times of clashing and transition.
But there is a sense in which Renoir might very well be described as naïf and ingenuous. This would refer not to his method or technique, but to the spiritual content of his work, what he means and has to say. The centre of his enjoyment lay always in something charming, radiant, opulent, and, if you like, sensuous. And so those who are ascetically disposed, if not in their life, in their tastes, condemn Renoir as pretty and sentimental. But often they go further and conclude that he was facile, that he painted without difficulty or trouble, as the birds sing. It may, however, have been as difficult for him to attain a satisfactory expression of his emotion, which was of facility, as it was for Cézanne to express his intense consciousness of beauty struck out of conflicting opposites. Indeed, very often there are distinct indications of a struggle in Renoir, of inability to get exactly what he was aiming at. A superficial glance might put this down to bad elementary draughtsmanship. But one has only to consider the technical proficiency of his earlier work (see "Le Cabaret de la Mere Antony, Diane Chasseresse") to realise that the cause of this apparent ineptitude must be deeper. It is the honesty of the artist who is always developing and refuses to overcome difficulties by resort to the camouflage of the obvious and the hackneyed. Consequently the very failure has its appeal.
Different Periods
There is a great deal of difference of opinion as to the respective value of Renoir's earlier and his later work, and this has afforded an excellent opportunity for the conflicting schools, who all join in admiring Renoir, to set up within this ostensible "union sacrée" their old party divisions. The conservatives adhere, of course, to the first great period from 1870–1881; that is to say between Renoir's thirtieth and fortieth years. In the rest they see a gradual decline of inspiration, an increasing predilection for rotund and almost coarse sensuousness, a pathetic loss of technical power until, when tortured by gout and hopelessly paralysed, the old master could only apply chaotic dabs of hot and hotter colour, his work became worthless. The extremists, on the other hand, see a steady, though uneven, development. They admit readily the enchantment of the period of early maturity when Renoir was at the height of his physical powers, but they have an uncomfortable feeling that this kind of art is a trifle too normal, it is something that practically anyone can enjoy with a little effort. The later work is more difficult. Renoir never lost his peculiar charm, even when painting the fattest of models (his model, I think, just grew fatter), but he experimented in different directions, passing from the study of light more and more to that of form. Latterly, when an invalid, he was compelled to confine himself within narrower bounds, and the appeal of his work has less volume in it. Nevertheless, it is maintained these last are the two greatest periods, if not in positive achievement, at any rate in intention.
I am disposed, if anything, to favour the work done in the first two phases, between his thirtieth and sixtieth years, and I am not sure that some of his most perfect pictures do not belong to the earlier of the two. For he did not produce many perfect pictures; it is nearly always possible to trace some defect. For instance, there has recently been exhibited at the Eldar Gallery one of the remarkable series of "Baigneuses." This particular canvas was painted in 1888. There is a great deal that is very beautiful in it, but it is not a whole. It is a "studio" picture, the nude and the landscape have no inevitable connection, and little interest is displayed in the face. Further, the body is cut off, or rather smoothed off, from its environment by a swish of paint, which signifies nothing, except that Renoir became too excited by the actual touch and feel and putting on of the paint, and also that he had an idée fixe about the gradual merging of the outline into its surroundings. This was the sentimental echo of his former genuine enthusiasm for plein-air effects. In many of his otherwise admirable figure studies this spongy film (especially affecting the hands) spoils the precision of his rendering. Sometimes, however, it is appropriate; for instance, in the famous picture, "La Moulin de la Galette" (1876). Here the flowing atmospheric technique and the significance coincide. The radiant coolness of the dappled light and shade is expressed with a freedom and spontaneity which is often lacking in Monet and Pisarro. Yet in spite of the unalloyed delight of this dancing scene I always feel a lurking criticism. This is not because of the kind of sentiment which might be mistaken for sentimentality; it is due to something else, a sameness and repetition. There is an absence of diversity in these light-hearted revellers; in fact they are just one man and one woman duplicated many times over, and flushed with exactly the same translucent emotion. Renoir did not possess great constructive imaginative power, and he had very little interest in character. This general limitation, however, only became a concrete limitation (that is to say, a defect observable inside a picture, instead of one of the infinite things that the picture is not) when he was actually portraying some scene necessitating a variety of individual characters.
It is in some of his landscapes, or in portrait heads such as that of Madame Charpentier, or studies such as "La Loge," and some of the later nudes that there is the completest fusion of the content and the form, of the technique and the emotion. It is frequently said that Renoir was not a landscape painter, but was par excellence a painter of women or of woman. The latter statement undoubtedly has some truth in it, although the interest was not so much in woman as in a particular roseate emotion, more evident in women than in men. But he was also a very considerable landscape painter, and his figures of women are usually placed in the open air, amid scenery possessing the same soft and sweeping texture. Even when an invalid he still painted out of doors, in a specially constructed glass house, while his model posed, often naked, in his garden.
About 1881 he seems to have exhausted his direct interest in the plein-air movement. Incidentally, he took a journey to Italy, but there is no evidence of any influence of this visit upon his work, except that it may have served to throw into stronger relief the peculiarities of the French school and his own kinship with it—that school which (in his own phrase) "est si gentille, si clair, de si bonne compagnie."
This, however, is least applicable to the artist towards whom his own inner development seems to have guided him, namely Ingres. To put it in the usual superficial and rather unsatisfactory way, he was passing from the study of light to that of two dimensional form. The actual result was a synthesis in which brilliant colour and light played a part never dreamt of by Ingres. At first his work showed an unusual hardness and lack of skill. He never possessed the sureness of touch of Manet, which often was mere virtuosity; nor does one ever feel behind his hand the overwhelming impetuosity of Van Gogh. He feels his way gradually, producing a great deal, in fact too much, and succeeding only in certain moments. The culmination was reached in the large composition of the four bathers (which I have not seen) in the collection of M. J. E. Blanche. Opinion seems to differ as to its value, but, whatever defects it may possess, it is clearly of a monumental character, and probably represents the highest point that Renoir was able to attain in the attempt to bring together the sculpturesque qualities of one of his first large compositions, "Diane Chasseresse," and the luminosity and richness of the "Moulin de la Galette."
Between the years 1885 and 1897 there followed a whole succession of remarkable pictures, including "Les Enfants Benard," "Mère et Enfant," "Les Filles de Catulle Mendès," "Les Parapluies," and "Au Piano," of which there are two examples, one being at the Luxembourg. Although Renoir was moving away from his former softness and mistiness, as if in dissatisfaction with the youthful joy in mere sensation, he never left it right behind, he remained on the borderland and looked back on it, contemplating it with maturer insight.
About 1900 to 1919
The last stage constituted a partial return to the first; he reverted to his former freedom and suppleness of touch. But the method is more direct and the content more realistic and crude, although there is still the same lyrical tenderness. His colours are bolder and hotter, and it is alleged that he strengthened them purposely with a view to their being modified by time. This appears to me a most dangerous doctrine. How could one ever be certain that the present wrong tones would be altered by exposure to exactly the correct tones? And why put oneself to such pain in the present for the sake of an uncertain future? For it must be very painful to a sensitive artist to create something out of tone, even on purpose. For these reasons (and without the backing of any authority) I rather doubt whether there is much truth in this intended excuse. And I doubt whether any excuse is necessary. I believe that in the majority of cases Renoir meant something by this hotter colour, and that in this respect the pictures are their own justification. It is impossible to hail all of them as masterpieces. Many definitely betray loss of vitality and imagination. But I cannot agree that the work of this period is that of an invalided old man who is living sentimentally on his past.
There has recently been on view, at the Chelsea Book Club, a collection of oil paintings and pastels by Renoir. Some of them were relatively unimportant earlier works, but the majority belonged to the later period. None of them, with the exception, perhaps, of a flower piece and a small head of a woman, can be ranked very high; but they indicate the limits and at the same time the mellow charm of the work of this time. This charm is not perhaps immediately felt; it grows upon one, but it is quite real. In his old age Renoir remained as much as ever a poet, only his poetry is thinner and more fragile.
Renoir was born in 1841 and died in 1919. Of his famous contemporaries only Claude Monet is still alive.
HOWARD HANNAY