Portraits by Renoir - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1997 by Gloria Groom

In "Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)," as well as others showing Parisians relaxing in the country, he presented an ideal of modernity that pairs a lively sense of immediacy with a respect for the harmonious vision of modern life, emphasizing its poetry rather than ugliness.

Renoir's homage to la vie moderne, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," together with "Dance at Bougival," represent a crystallization of the artist's efforts to combine portraiture with the full-scale painting of modern life. In "Luncheon," the result is a radiant image of easy sociability--a harmonious commingling of sexes and classes on the terrace of a popular restaurant in the village of Chatou, along the Seine. Among the actresses, journalists, collectors, and models who posed for Renoir is Aline Charigot, the 20-year-old seamstress who soon would be Renoir's mistress and eventually his wife.

Both "Luncheon of the Boating Party" and "Two Sisters" signal Renoir's departure from "classic" Impressionism's modern-life subjects and depiction of transient effects of light by means of flickering brushwork. Financially secure for the first time in his career, he was ready to change the direction of his art again.

Despite his tenure as court painter for the Charpentiers, which gained him powerful clients, Renoir felt strongly about the importance of "keeping one's place" and remained outside the lives of the people to whom he catered. Renoir's private life was quite different from his public face, and this difference is reflected in the varying degrees of formality and attitude toward his sitters.

This dichotomy becomes clear when his portrait of Marie Clapisson is compared with that of his future wife Aline Charigot. Madame Clapisson is given the "star" treatment, with special attention paid to her expensive gown and gloves, while Aline, whom he married in 1891, five years after the birth of their first son, Pierre, is shown as a rustic Madonna, with country-fresh cheeks and plump physique. Aline's is a portrait of affection as well as of nostalgia for the natural, earthy, and fecund female--as opposed to the "new woman," who Renoir saw as anomalous and threatening.

Despite the charm and apparent unselfconsciousness of these portraits, by the mid 1880s, Renoir had become increasingly dissatisfied with the restrictions inherent in a practice that required fulfilling the expectations of a variety of sitters without compromising his artistic integrity. His displeasure seems to have matched that of potential sitters, who were frightened off by his "new manner." For the remaining three decades of his career, portraiture ceased to be a major source of his income.

Renoir's withdrawal from portrait-making coincided with his departure from Paris, and from scenes of contemporary life, to the country, where he painted nudes and classical subject matter. Part of this retreat was due to his ongoing search for a style that would combine the contingent with the permanent, the transitory effects of light with the solid modeling found in past art. In this, he was not alone. By the 1880s, Cezanne, Edgar Degas, and Monet as well were wrestling with technical problems, rethinking Impressionism, and seeking new paths.