VOORT, Michiel van der, the Elder

In this small private portrait it would seem the painter surprised Madame Monet at home in Argenteuil, lying on the sofa reading the paper. Without troubling to adopt any more formal pose, she is gazing calmly at the artist with her fine, dark eyes. This was a natural, unstudied scene precisely observed.

Renoir made several paintings of spectators at theaters or concerts - a subject that explores the theme of seeing and being seen. Although the artist may have begun the painting as a portrait of specific individuals, he later reworked it to present two women whose identities and relationship are unknown. The subdued lighting and clearly defined forms suggest that Renoir was beginning to modify his experimental painting techniques by adopting a more traditional approach, as several critics noted when the work was first exhibited in 1882.

The Cirque Fernando was established in 1875, in 1890 it was renamed Cirque Medrano. It was a major attraction for Montmartre artists. The Cirque Fernando had its pitch on the Boulevard Rochechouart. In 1894 it was redesigned as a theatre. Included among its regular guests were Lautrec, and also Degas, Renoir and Seurat, who decorated the rooms with their paintings.

The present painting features Francisca Wartenberg (left) and her sister, Angelina (right), members of an itinerant German acrobatic troupe. Ages 17 and 14, respectively, the girls take their bows after a performance.

The picture shows a young girl in a theatre box. The subject of a theatre box had been treated earlier by Renoir in ‘La Loge’ (London, Courtauld Institute).

Renoir painted this nude at a pivotal moment in his career. In the 1870s, the artist experimented with Impressionist techniques, dissolving figures and forms in the atmospheric effects of light and shadow. By the 1880s, the figures in his paintings had become more solid and better defined. This shift in style is visible in the smooth texture of the woman’s pearly skin and the crisp outline of the curves of her body set against a sketchy, vibrant background.

The masterly portrait bust is the only surviving part of the mausoleum of Jacobus Franciscus van Caverson and his wife, Johanna Schockaert, which once stood in the former Dominican church in Brussels. The monument was demolished at the end of the 18th century. All the other elements apart from the bust were then lost, having been mentioned together for the last time in the Brussels auction catalogue of 1820. The composition is also known to us through an engraving in Jacobus Le Roy’s Le Grand th�atre sacr� du Duch� de Brabant (1734) and by a small number of designs preceding the completion of the grave. Above a tomb with the funerary text stands, on a base, a portrait of the deceased, flanked to the left and right by two stately seated female figures, Fortitude and Prudence, a reference to Caverson’s motto: Fortiter et prudenter. On the fronton Saturn is depicted, his left arm resting on an hourglass and pointing with his right hand to the words Prope est. The architectural conception of the monument is classical: the tomb is decorated with two consoles, and in front of and next to the two Corinthian pilasters hang the sixteen quarters of the two deceased, whilst their helmeted coats of arms are set up under the fronton.

Judging from the engraving this was an impressive composition, the loss of which is to be lamented. Fortunately the well preserved remaining bust is proof of Michiel van der Voort’s skill and mastery. Although the sculptor represents his model realistically with deep eye sockets, sunken cheeks, narrow, pressed lips and a prominent nose, he does not impair either the bearing or the worthiness of Caverson, speaker of the second chamber of the Council of Brabant and member of the Privy Council and the Council of State. The imposing Regency wig and the virtuously draped toga further emphasis the magistrate’s dignity. One may assume that Michiel van der Voort received the commission for the Brussels funerary monument around 1713, the year of Caverson’s death. Right then he was at the peak of his career as a highly productive artist and had just completed the pulpit for St Bernard’s Abbey in Hemiksem with its Four Continents, which now stands in Antwerp Cathedral.

This canvas was painted in the artist’s studio, where Renoir’s model, Aline Charigot — whom he married in 1890 — posed in a wicker chair. The beach depicted here is probably near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast.

Monet recounted what happened that day in his Argenteuil garden. Renoir appeared, and, attracted by the atmosphere, decided to paint the same subject as painted by Manet, Camille Monet and Her Son in Their Garden.

It is interesting to compare the two works painted that day. We see that Manet’s painting seems both more carefully thought out and more ambitious than Renoir’s. Manet remains allusive, lacking the spontaneity shown by Renoir. But then, Renoir was practiced at this kind of painting, whereas Manet was the beginner.

Although a commissioned work, this portrait of five-year-old �tienne Goujon, the son of a French senator, was painted en plein air and is entirely Impressionistic. The freshness of the summer garden envelops the boy, filling his smock with a play of reflected colours. Only the face, executed with a classically precise line, displays an unchildlike seriousness.

The face, executed with a classically precise line, displays an unchildlike seriousness.

Renoir had numerous patrons from the newly prosperous professional class of later-nineteenth-century Paris. This led to his keen sense for the harmony of ideal bourgeois domestic happiness in the Children’s Afternoon at Wargemont

Bougival is a village in north-central France, located about 15 km from Paris in its western suburbs. Bougival was a popular recreation spot where the Impressionist painters, including Renoir, Monet and Sisley, painted country scenes along the Seine.

Bougival is a village in north-central France, located about 15 km from Paris in its western suburbs. Bougival was a popular recreation spot where the Impressionist painters, including Renoir, Monet and Sisley, painted country scenes along the Seine.

The woman’s face, framed by her red bonnet, is the focus of attention, both ours and her companion’s.

In 1883, Renoir painted two large dance scenes, Dance in the City, and Dance in the Country, conceived as pendants. Paul Lhote, a friend of the artist, served as the model for the male dancer in both pictures; the figures of the women and the treatment of the background are different.

The elegant young woman in Dance in the City is pictured with her partner in a room in which the chic decor is emphasized by the pillar and the large potted plants. The dancer is the 17-year-old Suzanne Valadon, who later became a painter herself. The model posing for Dance in the Country, who gazes smilingly out at the onlooker, is Aline Charigot, who was 18 years Renoir’s junior and whom he was to marry in 1890.

These two paintings were created during a period in which Renoir started to distance himself from impressionistic paintings in the search for new stylistic media and subject matter. They mark the transition to the painter’s final great period of creativity.

In 1883, Renoir painted two large dance scenes, Dance in the City, and Dance in the Country, conceived as pendants. Paul Lhote, a friend of the artist, served as the model for the male dancer in both pictures; the figures of the women and the treatment of the background are different.

The elegant young woman in Dance in the City is pictured with her partner in a room in which the chic decor is emphasized by the pillar and the large potted plants. The dancer is the 17-year-old Suzanne Valadon, who later became a painter herself. The model posing for Dance in the Country, who gazes smilingly out at the onlooker, is Aline Charigot, who was 18 years Renoir’s junior and whom he was to marry in 1890.

These two paintings were created during a period in which Renoir started to distance himself from impressionistic paintings in the search for new stylistic media and subject matter. They mark the transition to the painter’s final great period of creativity.

This picture is one of Renoir’s largest composition. It features the cheerful attitude to life and the Impressionist theme of figures in the open air. The assembled company are enjoying the carefree mood of a Sunday and the agreeable warmth of the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Renoir painted the canvas directly from the scene, the models in the foreground are his friends.

The Moulin de la Galette was a dancing garden, created by converting two old windmills in Montmartre, where the public could come and dance on Sundays.

This is a sketchier version of medium size of the famous painting in the Mus�e d’Orsay. In almost every detail it matches the larger version. This version was probably made for the home of his friend Victor Chocquet. It was sold in 1990 at Sotheby’s in New York for US$ 78.100.000, the second highest price ever paid for a work of art at that date.

This painting, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Tambourine, forms a pair Dancing Girls with Musical Instruments. They were painted to decorate a dining room of an apartment in Paris. It was intended that the pictures should hang either side of a mirror. The model for both girls was Georgette Pigeot, but the head of the figure in the Dancing Girl with Castanets was modelled on Renoir’s maid, Gabrielle Renard.

This painting, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Castanets, forms a pair Dancing Girls with Musical Instruments. They were painted to decorate a dining room of an apartment in Paris. It was intended that the pictures should hang either side of a mirror. The model for both girls was Georgette Pigeot, but the head of the figure in the Dancing Girl with Castanets was modelled on Renoir’s maid, Gabrielle Renard.

This painting is a study of a nude for which the model was Lise Tr�hot, the artist’s mistress. Although the study was transformed into Diana, the ancient goddess of the hunt, in order to produce a painting acceptable for the jury of the 1867 Salon, the painting was rejected.

The style of the painting shows the influence of Courbet.

Renoir and Bazille met in November 1862 in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where they attended drawing classes along with Monet and Sisley. The four pupils quickly became friends and left Gleyre in the spring of 1863 in order to devote themselves entirely to open-air painting. The next summer Bazille moved into a studio in Paris and shared it with Renoir. Toward the end of 1867, Bazille painted his friend in a nonchalant attitude with his feet up on the seat of his chair. The painting remained in Renoir’s possession for the rest of his life.

Renoir reciprocated by painting a picture of his friend in their studio. Bazille is at his easel, leaning forward slightly with his legs crossed, working on a still-life of dead birds. On the wall behind him is a winter landscape by Claude Monet with a view of Honfleur. The predominant colours in the picture are gray and beige.

Despite their differences, one factor is common in these paintings: they depict what appears to be a random moment in everyday life and avoid any semblance of a posed composition.

When Renoir painted the maid, Gabrielle, he transformed her into the very epitome of female youth, bloom and happiness. We see her in a flimsy neglig�e at an 18th-century dressing table, pleased to see how jewellery and a rose in her hair enhance her own beauty.

Gabrielle Renard (1879-1959) was a cousin of Aline’s who joined the household in 1894 as Jean’s nanny and did not leave till she married an American painter in 1914. Possibly she did not really possess the grace we see in her. Perhaps Renoir was following his own ideal rather than visible fact.

Renoir was exceptionally sensitive to details: earrings, a flower in the hair, and a neck scarf play no less role in his heroines’ outfits and his paintings’ colour schemes than do the dress or the coiffure. The present portrait is dominated by the fan.

The painting was a great success at the seventh Impressionist exhibition in 1882.

This painting is the result of a commission to paint a nine-year-old girl named Marie Goujon. It is an example of Renoir’s new style which he developed after his trip to Italy in 1881. Renoir called this style “aigre,” or “sour.” The word conveys a sense of the hardness and tightness of his new style.

Renoir’s In the Summer is not that far from Salon painting of the period. Only the free rendering of sunstruck leaves in the background and the unprettified, forthright girl indicate a new direction.

In 1869, Renoir and Monet produced a whole series scenes of modern life painted outdoors. Their subject was La Grenouill�re (literally “frogpond”). Situated on the banks of the Île de Croissy on the Seine near Paris (opposite Bougival), La Grenouill�re was an elegant establishment built on a barge and combining bathing cabins and a restaurant. It was reached by footbridges and a small island with a tree, from which one watched the bathers. The island forms the centrepiece of a pair of twin compositions by the two artists. Monet’s is the more structured, while Renoir’s is livelier, more tightly framed, and more picturesque. Both paintings devote much attention to the reflections of trees, people, and sky in the rippling water.

La Loge was Renoir’s principal exhibit in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874. The complexity of its subject matter and its virtuoso technique helped to establish the artist’s reputation as one of the leaders of this radical new movement in French art. Renoir’s brother Edmond and Nini Lopez, a model from Montmartre known as ‘Fish-face’, posed for this ambitious composition.

Character, emotion, individuality - Renoir has left all those aims of portraiture aside in pursuit of a harmony of black, white, and blue that is reminiscent of Manet’s finest works. The subject of this painting may be the same model, Anna, whom the artist painted nude in the celebrated work from the same year that is now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

In Renoir’s late period, when he no longer pursued the expression of lighting effects or concerned himself with thorough drawing, he emerged in full measure as a master of sensuous, baroque colour. In his paintings, the everydayness dear to the Impressionists gave way to the classical genres: landscape, still-life, and the nude.

Renoir’s change of direction between 1884 and 1887 was dictated by an individual approach. The spontaneity of Impressionism, as well as its traditional fondness for landscape, gave way to a gradual elaboration of composition that enabled Renoir to reexamine the problem of the nude in a landscape. For his Large Bathers, Renoir did a number of preliminary designs. Having been a Delacroix admirer in his early years, Renoir here seems to turn toward Ingres, and the way he neatly outlines his shapes places him in the context of the nude that in the 1890s was to preoccupy such artists as F�lix Valloton and Charles Maurin.

Faced with criticism of his new style after completing The Large Bathers, an exhausted Renoir never again devoted such painstaking effort to a single work.

This painting is the life-size portrait of the painter’s mistress, Lise Tr�hot. It was exhibited at the 1868 Salon.

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children was one of the paintings Renoir exhibited in the Salon of 1879. The painting was commissioned by Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), a publisher in Paris, who published novels of Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, and Goncourt. Charpentier and his wife, n�e Margu�rite-Louise Lemonnier (1848-1904) collected paintings by the Impressionists.

The two children in the painting are Georgette-Berthe (1872-1945) and Paul-�mile-Charles (1875-1895). Following the fashion of the time, the boy’s clothes match those of his sister Georgette.

This bust is of Renoir’s young wife, Aline Charigot. The couple married in 1890. It was created in collaboration with Richard Guino (1890-1973). The sitter died in 1915, and Renoir had one of the busts erected on her grave.

Renoir met Aline Charigot in 1880, and they married in 1890.

Renoir was especially close to Monet, both personally and in his aesthetics. For him, though, the human figure rather than landscape was always the main focus of attention. For his female models he always sought out girls of ampler proportions in his Montmartre neighbourhood, many of them sempstresses by trade. They liked posing, and had nothing against indulging a lover who could pay,either. Renoir liked them. Without troubling over questions of morality and society, he glorified the beauty and sensuality he saw in them.

Renoir admiration for French 18th-century masters such as Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, whom he copied in his own youthful days as a porcelain painter, lay behind erotic pictures such as Anna. This nude is entirely natural, neither coquettish, nor provocative. Renoir’s colourist subtlety tenderly recorded nuanced shades in the flesh of this woman sitting on the edge of a lilac patterned armchair in front of a sketchy background of what seem to be white undergarments against darker plum black. The interplay of lighter and darker areas is as important in lending the composition its baroque dynamism as are the turned and arrested position of the body or the red highlighting on the chair, lips and the corners of the eye.

The beautiful young woman, a 19-year-old model called Anna, with her very feminine body and delicate features, is the perfect embodiment of Renoir’s ideal of womanhood. The painter remained loyal to this ideal to the end of his life.

Chatou was a popular excursion site in the environs of Paris. Renoir painted several pictures here, including his famous Luncheon of the Boating Party (Phillips Collection, Washington). With its celebration of leisure culture, its lush, vibrant colour, and its flickering brushwork, Oarsmen at Chatou is a quintessentially Impressionist painting.

This picture was painted in the Oriental style which was in fashion since Delacroix’s Women of Algiers. The model for the painting was Lise Tr�hot, the artist’s mistress.

This painting was executed during Renoir’s trip to Italy in 1881. In Italy he found new inspiration in the works of Renaissance artists.

The painting depicts the sisters Alice (born 1876) and Elisabeth (born 1874), daughters of the Jewish banker Louis Raphael Cahen d’Anvers (1837-1922).

Jeanne Samary (1857-1890) was a French actress who also worked as model. She came from a strong musical and theatrical background: her father was a cellist, and two of her maternal aunts, as well as her grandmother, had been actresses.

She featured in Renoir’s 1876 work The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette and was the main subject of The Swing, also done that summer. At some point around 1877, Samary became Renoir’s lover, a move commemorated in the The Dreaming Woman (La Reverie). Renoir painted two other portraits of her.

Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was a French novelist. As a close friend of Goncourt, Flaubert, and Zola, he belonged to the Naturalist school of prose. In 1867 Daudet married Julia Allard (1844-1940), French poet and essayist, author of Impressions de nature et d’art (1879), L’Enfance d’une Parisienne (1883), and some literary studies written under the pseudonym “Karl Steen.”

Madame Georges Charpentier, n�e Margu�rite-Louise Lemonnier (1848-1904) was the wife of Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), a publisher in Paris, who published novels of Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, and Goncourt. The couple collected paintings by the Impressionists.

In 1880 Renoir was commissioned by Cahen d’Anvers, a banker, to paint portraits of his daughters.

The painting portrays an unidentified man of age 32. There are two inscriptions on the picture: A.V NooRT / AET’. 32. (signature, top right) and 1615 (date, coat of arms, top left).

Jeanne Samary (1857-1890) was a French actress who also worked as model. She came from a strong musical and theatrical background: her father was a cellist, and two of her maternal aunts, as well as her grandmother, had been actresses.

Renoir became acquainted with the 20-year-old actress Jeanne Samary, who had already made her mark on the Parisian stage, at the home of his patron, Madame Charpentier. This large portrait in a ball dress - one of many Renoir painted - was intended for the 1879 Salon and reflected his pursuit of official recognition.

Jeanne Samary featured in Renoir’s 1876 work The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette and was the main subject of The Swing, also done that summer. At some point around 1877, she became Renoir’s lover, a move commemorated in the The Dreaming Woman (La Reverie). Renoir painted two other portraits of her.

After a fourteen-year stay in Rome, Michiel van der Voort returned to his native town, Antwerp. There, he specialized in carving pulpits decorated by figures and foliage, vivid and picturesque illustrations in sculpture of themes for sermons, handled with extravagant rhetoric. With an appeal to the senses intended to enhance the efficacy of religious eloquence, the sculptor here represents the dramatic conversion of St Norbert, who has fallen off his horse at the foot of the Crucified Christ, near a cave and a storm-tossed copse.

The pulpit was executed for the Church of the Norbertine Order in Mechelen and it found a new home in the Cathedral. Theodor Verhaegen (1701-1759), a follower of Faydherbe, is credited with the execution of the countless little animals and the rich foliage of the pulpit. The pulpit was completed by Jan Frans van Geel.

This fine pulpit came from the abbey of St Bernard in Hemiksem on the River Scheldt. The body of the pulpit is supported by personifications of the four then known continents, symbolizing the spread of the Catholic faith over the entire earth. Europe holds a sceptre, representing her supremacy over the rest of the world. To the right, Asia is dressed in oriental-style costume, while on the left, in the darkness below the steps, we see Africa - a black woman in turban. America, finally, wears a feathered head-dress. The consoles beneath the actual pulpit are decorated with symbols of the Four Evangelists.

The most striking feature is the staircase, which is carved in the shape of trees, oak and beech trunks and intertwining branches and twigs in which birds and other small creatures sit. The big birds sit on large branches and the small ones among the leaves and on the roof. They are rendered very realistically and can be readily identified: a parrot, a turkey, a heron, a peacock, a cock, a little owl and many other birds. The dove appears as a symbol of the Holy Spirit in an aureole below the sounding board, which is held up by a trumpet-blowing angel and a variety of small angels.

The whole displays a strange mixture of styles: the body of the pulpit is baroque but the sounding board above it is closer to rococo. The staircase, meanwhile, with the trees and animals is carved very realistically. Despite this variety, the pulpit is a peerless masterpiece of Flemish sculpture.

After a fourteen-year stay in Rome, Michiel van der Voort returned to his native town, Antwerp. There, he specialized in carving pulpits decorated by figures and foliage, vivid and picturesque illustrations in sculpture of themes for sermons, handled with extravagant rhetoric. With an appeal to the senses intended to enhance the efficacy of religious eloquence, the sculptor here represents the dramatic conversion of St Norbert, who has fallen off his horse at the foot of the Crucified Christ, near a cave and a storm-tossed copse.

The pulpit was executed for the Church of the Norbertine Order in Mechelen and it found a new home in the Cathedral. Theodor Verhaegen (1701-1759), a follower of Faydherbe, is credited with the execution of the countless little animals and the rich foliage of the pulpit. The pulpit was completed by Jan Frans van Geel.

The picture shows the original design of the pulpit executed for the Church of the Norbertine Order in Mechelen and now in the Sint-Romboutskathedraal, Mechelen. The original model for the pulpit is now in the City Museum in Mechelen.

The preaching pulpits in the Antwerp and Mechelen cathedrals by Michiel van der Voort and that in the St Gudule in Brussels by Hendrik Frans Verbruggen, as well as the carved confessionals covered with statues, which have lost all resemblance to furniture, may scandalise purists. To us they represent the most characteristic and the most convincing product of the inventive imagination of northern Baroque: there is nothing else like it outside Belgium.

When Renoir made this self-portrait in 1875, his paintings were bringing in little income. The artist presents himself with unkempt hair and beard, yet smartly dressed in a striped shirt and dark blue necktie. The textured paint - almost transparent in some places, thickly applied in others - suggests he was experimenting with technique. This work was shown at the second Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1876 and eventually purchased by an important collector, Dr. Georges de Bellio, who Renoir claimed had “gone crazy” for it.

Renoir presents himself in this self-portrait as a mature and confident man. He was in his late fifties and well-established as an artist; the flowered wallpaper and his bourgeois clothes allude to a comfortable living. His health, on other hand, was poor, and the intensity of his gaze suggests an incisive investigation of the features of his face in a mirror. Renoir never exhibited this painting, and it remained in his studio until his death twenty years later.

After 1900 Renoir mainly lived in the south of France. Shortly before his death - by then the nearly 80-year-old artist was crippled in a wheelchair and had to have his paintbrush tied to his twisted arthritic fingers - Renoir devoted himself to a series of composition with nude bathers.

His markedly violent method of painting conflicts with the physical condition of the artist. The large painting which shows two voluminous women reclining at leisure in a lush landscape has the effect of an improvisation placed directly onto the canvas. Over the long years of his career as an artist Renoir had created an extensive repertoire of female nudes and poses which he was able to call upon quite easily, now that he was painting the Bathers. By using thinly applied colours he endowed his nudes with a liveliness which turns them into embodiments of sheer vitality.

The painting represents Claude, Renoir’s the third son at the age of eight.

This painting is also titled (wrongly) Mr. and Mrs. Sisley. The painter Sisley is indeed recognizable, but the lively young lady on his arm is not in fact Sisley’s companion but Renoir’s favourite model at this period, Lise Tr�hot. This is an outdoor scene in a town garden, which is suggested in a rather vague way.