Renoir

This extraordinary watercolor, Landscape, Autumn Effect, was given by Renoir to Madame Clapisson, née Valentine Henriette Billet. Her husband, Léon Clapisson – who lived on investments and was a son of the violinist and successful composer Louis Clapisson – was also a collector. A magnificent Impressionist landscape, this watercolor plays on alternating warm and cool colors, with cold shades, particularly blue, dominating. It offers the vision of a bright, frigid autumn morning in a countryside gently awakening: the trees, whose leaves range from green to rust and yellow, are slowly becoming bare, while the water of the stream shimmers under the pale sun, animated by the warm brown reflections of the surrounding trees and vegetation. The white paper left in reserve to delineate the riverbanks suggests the thin layer of frost deposited during the night. In the distance, the trees appear blue, while touches of mauve seem to emerge in places from the foliage. The textures and colors are handled with extreme refinement to recreate the gentle, silky vibration of nature in the morning light.

The portraits of Madame Clapisson that Renoir created in 1882 and 1883 – “with what pleasure,” to borrow Vollard’s words – are emblematic of the gap between Impressionist modernity and what patrons and the broader public were prepared to accept. The first portrait Renoir painted for her, Among the Roses (Fig. 1), shows Madame Clapisson sitting on a bench in the garden of her townhouse at 48 rue Charles-Laffitte in Neuilly-sur-Seine. A needlework basket and parasol at her side, the young woman in a pastel-blue dress is placed before an extraordinary mass of mixed red and pale-pink roses. The effect achieved by the artist is that of a young woman peacefully seated in a comfortable setting of greenery and calm, enlivened only by the sounds of nature and the movements of air and light. The handling is free yet balanced and perfectly nuanced; Impressionist technique is revealed at its peak, with touches of green and white animating the pale blue of the dress and the use of a dark background beneath an explosion of blue, red, yellow, pink, and green. Nevertheless, this painting was refused by Mr. Clapisson and placed on consignment with Durand-Ruel, where the identity of the sitter was concealed. Shown in London and Brussels under the title On the Bench, it was eventually purchased by Albert Spencer.

A second portrait of Madame Clapisson was therefore created, much more traditional in the sitter’s almost Ingresque pose and in the elegance of her attire (Fig. 2). Wearing a dark-blue, almost black dress and yellow gloves, Madame Clapisson holds a fan of white feathers that echoes the color of her hair. The painting was sold to Durand-Ruel in 1908, then purchased from him in 1913 by Martin Ryerson, a Chicago collector, and entered the Art Institute’s collections in 1933.

It was therefore to Madame Clapisson – whom Renoir found so congenial – that this watercolor landscape was dedicated. Did he give it to her between the two portraits as a way of making amends for the initial “flop,” or once the commission was completed? Did she purchase it? Does it testify to her own taste for landscape? The authors of the Bernheim-Jeune Catalogue Raisonné date other closely related landscape watercolors to around 1890. Perhaps once with Ambroise Vollard, they share a common sensitivity, with similar compositions framed by wide white margins surrounding the main motif. Yet Renoir also left margins in certain landscapes painted as early as 1885 (Catalogue Raisonné nos. 824, 890, and 891, the last two formerly with Vollard). Given that his relationship with the Clapisson family began in the early 1880s, it is possible that this drawing may be slightly earlier than previously thought.