Lot n° 377
Estimation :
30000 - 50000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 68 900EUR
Pierre-Auguste RENOIR (1841-1919) - Lot 377
Pierre-Auguste RENOIR (1841-1919)
Study for the portrait of Mlle ADAM (Madeleine ADAM (1873-1955)), 1887
Pierre noire, red chalk and white chalk highlights on paper mounted on cardboard.
Titled and dated on the back on a gallery label "Charles Durand-Ruel, Avenue de Friedland, Paris 8e".
62.5 x 47.8 cm (Slight exposure of the paper).
Certificate from the Comité Renoir at the purchaser's expense.
Exhibition:
"Renoir Intime" at Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, January 7/February 8, 1969, exhibition catalog no. 25.
Provenance:
- Given by the artist to the model.
- From the estate of Madeleine Adam.
Related work:
Catalog raisonné de l'artiste, Guy-Patrice et Michel Dauberville, tome 2, Éditions Bernheim-Jeune, 2009, Portrait de Madeleine Adam, 1887, pastel and pencil on paper, 60 x 48 cm , illustrated at no. 1398 p.447.
Portrait of Madeleine Adam at the Château d'Outreau.
(Fig.1)
When Madeleine was 15, her parents were looking for an artist to paint her and her sister Suzanne. It was the composer Charles
Gounod, a family friend, who introduced Renoir to the Adam family.
Having sold few paintings in recent years, Renoir accepted Mr. and Mrs. Adam's offer to spend a few days in their home.
Adam: he came to spend a few days at their property in Outreau, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, to paint the two portraits. Renoir hated leaving his studio on rue Saint-Georges in Paris, and found the portraits tedious to paint.
Madeleine Adam recounted the painter's stay 45 years later in handwritten notebooks for her family. The posing sessions took place in the château's large pink salon. However, Renoir refused to paint in this heterogeneous décor of antique objects, and began by pinning a large sheet to the wall to hide it. "He made a first sketch in red chalk [this is the work now presented for sale] to choose the framing and establish the position of my head and hands; satisfied with his work, he then attacked a new sheet of paper, which he worked with pastels, a technique that Degas had made him appreciate" (Madeleine Adam's personal notebook, family archives).
The Pastel Portrait is now in a private American collection (Fig. 2).
The notebooks mentioned above, written by Madeleine at the end of her life, testify to her prodigious memory and literary talent. 45 years later, she describes precisely how a posing session unfolds. While the painter scrutinizes the model, Madeleine observes him rigorously and describes him at work.
She also paints a physical portrait of Renoir: "What struck me most were his eyes: eyes partly hidden by thick, bushy eyebrows, brown tending to yellow. His eyesight was piercing, but always with an air of laughter, joyfulness and a sense of the funny side of things. His expression was a mixture of irony and tenderness, joke and delight, although he also had the air of a great shy man...".
The Adam dynasty, the bankers of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Madeleine's ancestors were the founders of the Adam bank and, from father to son, the first bankers in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Her father, Hippolyte
Adam, was also mayor of Outreau and a railroad administrator. Hippolyte had an artistic temperament, was a passionate musician and loved painting.
Galerie Georges PETIT, very fashionable at the time.
His collection included works by Manet, Degas, Renoir... Hippolyte had wanted his daughter Madeleine
Madeleine to be portrayed at the age of four by the painter Henner. Similarly, Albert Besnard painted her in pastel in her first ball gown. In 1899, Madeleine married Léon Yeatman. The couple had brilliant relations among artists, including José Maria
José Maria Sert, Fritz Thaulow, Jacques-Émile Blanche and
Marie Laurencin, musicians Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn, writers Anatole France and Marcel Proust, a childhood friend of Léon.
Renoir and the Portrait
By the end of the 1870s, Impressionist painters were in disrepute, with disastrous sales prices - both at exhibitions and auctions. Renoir withdrew from collective Impressionist exhibitions and tried a more official route, that of the annual Salon, which his dealer Durand-Ruel disapproved of, as did other Impressionist painters. By painting high-profile figures (the Charpentier family), certain celebrities (the actress Jeanne Savary) and his patron friends, often wealthy bankers, Renoir tried to make a name for himself at the official Salon.
This lot is presented by Cabinet Chanoit.
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