From Bohemia to Arcadia: Renoir between nervous modernity and primitive eternity

(1)

Michael F. Zimmermann

From

Bohemia to Arcadia:

Renoir between

Nervous Modernity and Primitive Eternity

Originalveröffentlichung in: Renoir - between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie : the early years; [Kunstmuseum Basel, April 1 - August 12, 2012], Ostfildern 2012, S. 15-50

(2)

Renoir andthe Contradictions of Happiness

Renoir isoften all too quicklylabeled as the “painter of happiness.”1 On the onehand,paintingssuchas Ball atthe Moulindela Galettes fig. i and Luncheon of the Boating Party fig. 2 are part of ourconception of Impressionism, a painting style supposedlydevotedtothe portrayal of the happiness of modernpeople in nature.2 Frolicking day-trippers and tourists are bathed in soft light and findthemselvesin an alwayssunnyand inviting atmos phere. Onthe otherhand,we sneer atopulentnudes in classicizing contours,childlike women,and dreamy children,whichRenoirele

vated to a guiding theme since The Bathers of 1884-87

fig.3, deemed the manifesto of his anti-avantgarde

art. Atfirst glance, the work ofthe laterRenoirsince the 1880s,his revitalization of the idyll anditstra

dition, reaching from the Renaissancethrough the eighteenthcen

tury to French neo-traditionalism andthe retour a I’ordre, have little tosayto modern ironyand postmodern cynicism. Feminists see it as fulfillment ofmaledesires. Projections onto women and onto art complement eachother here. As has so often been the case sincethe Renaissance, since Botticelli,Giorgione,and Titian,art asa whole is feminized: Venus or nymphs,goddesses orbathers populate heaven ly landscapesas well as more intimate paradises. They do notcontent themselves with appearing as mere objects of art alongside oth

ers.Arcadia,this other-worldly shore, yearned for by city dwellers and decadents,harboring shepherds livinginharmony withnature, advancesto the very realm ofart itself—remoteas fiction, always longedfor, never reached.3

Renoir bringsthis myth back to life,but he does not bor

rowhis image ofwomen only from TitianorGiorgione,fromRubens or Francois Girardon. Rather he endows his female figures—often reduced to the expression of femininity itself—with what Michel Foucault has describedas the“sexualhysteria” of the nineteenth cen tury. Hiswomenwith their childlike innocence seem to be naturally destined solelytoeroticism and motherhood.4InRenoir’searly work, however, the idyll isnotyettranscendent: he finds it at sites ofleisure and amusement on the outskirts of Paris,which he, as well as many of his contemporaries, would travel to via horse-drawn omnibuses or

the new suburban trains. He hadalready paintedbath

ers in 1868, atthe swimming hole ofLa Grenouillere near Chatoufig. 4, side by side with Monet.5As long as Renoir still strived to become Charles Baudelaire’s

(3)

From BohemiatoArcadia

“painterof modern life,” thus untilabout 1880, the happiness por

trayedin hisworks is the happinessof the couches nouvelles, the new middle classes—in which the poet StephaneMallarme had seenthe true addresseesof Impressionist paintingas early as 1876, and to which themajority of viewers of Impressionist paintings still belongs today.6 Renoirthus stands for the happiness within our reach. In any volume or calendar devoted to Impressionistpainting, heis given a central place—Renoir, the Impressionistparexcellence.

Butthe more he enraptures us on first sight, all the less does he seem to prevail undera closerlook.Edouard Manet,the gra

cious yet roguishobserver of modernlife,capturesour desiring gazes.

Even today, we are still open to perceive his specific mixture of inti

macy and detachment, by which alone introspection intothe small nooks and crannies of life is possible.Manet is the painter of the ever exposed secret.7 EdgarDegas depicts racehorsesas well as young femaledancersand beautiful women crouching inthe washtub, cap

turing fleetingmoments in astounding impartialityand from idio syncratic viewingangles. He impresses us withthe analyticalinsight ofthe physician, the anthropologist, the sociologist. Nevertheless, a magicalmelancholy still lies within his misanthropic profanation of the most beautifulincarnations of femininity. Even his voyeurism—

which he took to the limitsof experimentation—he ascribesto a so

ciallyperfectly acceptabledisregard for worldlymatters. The misery felt bythe model, thepainter,and the viewer are compensated by the reinforcementofa narcissistic ego.8 Claude Monet shatters the notions of earlierlandscapepainting, in which theview ofnature as thedestiny ofits inhabitants was still preserved, if onlyin fiction. The figuresinhis landscapes are nolonger accessories protectively sur

rounded, sublimely surmounted, or truculently menaced by nature.

Monetlifts the veil of chiaroscuro, both mellowand ponderous,and gives roomto landscapes bathed in light,compositionally revealing their contrasts by means of resolute brushstrokes.His radically aes thetic approach to nature is the foundation of modern “moods”:the subtle harmonyofnature with theoscillationsof“psychism” (a term used by Monet’s contemporaries), which, his records ofthefugitive conveys, can only be experienced at the costof a previous aliena tion from nature as a living environment—the estrangementof the tourist.9IsRenoir, by contrast,only the preserver of the idyll? Isthe compensationhegives for hisventure into modernismonly the vi

sion ofan everlasting return to a world ofchildlike harmony, compli antwomen,andall-agreeing desires?

Admittedly, Renoiristhe painterof happiness;buttherep etitionofthis stereotype—with the encouraging gesture of awaiter

(4)

inviting tourists to his terrace fig.2—hashardly ever satisfied anyone.

Even the feminist interpretations gobeyondthis cliche. Somehow we dointuit how endangered the idyll, beneath its surface, actu allyis.10 The attemptto liberate Renoir from his widespread “sickly sweet popularity,” or tolookbehindhis “trademark,”the“bewitch- ingly red-cheeked, curvaceouslypadded figuresof young women,” is not new. Alreadyin 1996, Gotz Adrianiintroduced anexhibition catalogue byaddressing this idea. Beholdingthe dream of happiness and simultaneously lookingbehind its curtainsis a topos that has accompanied thereception of his art from the very beginning. How has Renoirbecomethe painterofaninnocence easy to see through— and never actually innocent? This is thequestion towhichwe shall devoteourselves. From Julius Meier-Graefe to Adriani,thebanality of Renoir’shappinesshasbeencontrasted, above all,with the sub tlety of his formal qualities, firstandforemost the “weightlessness of his colors.”11Thisfalls too short. Formalqualitiesremain lifeless unlessset inrelation to the subject ofpainting. The charmthat Re

noir unfolds upon us even today is of poetic, not formalistic, nature.

It is also in thematic terms that Renoirputs his figures into a tension betweenvisions of happiness and their actual life, governed bycom

merce,love (including boughtlove), andthe precariousness of the bohemian world. Bohemia, this increasinglylarge fringeof society in which artists andwriters met with workers and revolutionaries, pettycriminals with maidservants and shop girls, social climbers with dropouts, was more to Renoirthan the mythicalrealm ofthe rebellious avant-garde artist. In Bohemia, genius and madnesswere closelyintertwined, justashappiness and despair,love andprostitu

tion, insouciance and syphilis. Renoir grew upin this precariousness.

His later biographers portrayed himnot only as“child of nature,” but alsoas nervous andover-anxious. Happiness was theconstruct of his art, even when he imprinted it onto bohemian life. It is especially in his complex,earlyworksthatwecan findtraces of the constructed nature of thishappiness.

Renoir intrigues us by ahappiness that defies everything—

but this defiance, aswellas his obstinatedelight in counterworlds, has to be kept in mindif we wantto dojustice to this sensitive, frail, work

ing-class boy who workedhisway up from povertyto asophisticated clientele. He could only satisfy the expectations laid uponhim if he remained detached, acting asa child ofnature andasolidcraftsman.

A natural talent, to be sure, refined notonlyby craftsmanship, but also by an inborn nervousness, a disorder that would soonbecome known as“neurasthenia” and seenasasymptomof over-civilization, of overworking, of the consciousness ofone’s own precariousness,

(5)

From Bohemia to Arcadia

and—as Sigmund Freud was the first to stress around 1900—of excessivesublimation,lack ofsatisfaction.12 Renoir, the nervous and over-anxious child of nature—this is the contradiction we have to pursueif we wantto understand the contradictionsrunning through his modern idylls. In this light, his visions of happiness become a muchmore ambiguous matter. In postmoderndiscourse,happiness has beenin vogue for about fifteenyears. Renoirwas convinced of beingable to find it in a precapitalist society. His father hadbeen a tailor, he himselfa porcelainpainter—bothtrades hadbeen ruined by industrialization.The merchandise, created by solid handicraft, wasallowed to be decorative—this he also applied to his painting.

Modern authors seek forhappinessbeyond the capitalistworld of commodities aswell; however, they seek forit ina futurethat has learned to abjurethe promises of eternal recurrence.Admittedly, evenhappiness beyond the world of commodities is a commodity in itself, inaccordance with the merciless mechanisms of capitalist absorption.13 The longing glance to a transcendent and ancient world beyondour world ofcapitalism definitely is modern, andthis glance we can find in Renoiras well ifwe face theinherent contradiction that we ourselvescannotescapeeither.

It is precisely the earlyRenoir, Renoir “in the making,” who showsusmore than justone path to happiness. The earlyRe

noir isthe painter of the intimate portraits of Lise Trehot,his mis

tressfrom1866 to 1873, whosefleshyfaceconveys anoverly weary, overly melancholic, overly shadowed impression (cat. 10,11). The intimacy with thiseminently real figure isfollowed up in 1876 by a half-length nude of amodelknownas “Margot,”her features dimly illuminated by a dappled light falling through thefoliage (J\ude in the Sun, 1875-76, Museed’Orsay, Paris). Some—suchas the contem porarycriticPaulMantz—have seen therein an image ofdecay, oth ers the fascination of thefemalebody. Even modern authorsdare to interpret the opulence of Renoir’s nudes not only as an expression ofsensuality, but as amarkof aquite brutal deformation.14As in the nudes of Botticelli andTitian, JoanMiroand Willem de Kooning,the female nude advances from a mere subject of painting to themeta

phor ofpainting itself: the eroticism inthe painting is sub

limated to the eroticismof paintingitself.Withouttaking into account the development from LiseVritha Parasol fig.5

to Margot,Renoir’slatercurvaceousnudes—often reclin

ing and merging with the landscape like Giorgione’s Venus (1510, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemalde- galerie Alte Meister)—must remain enigmatic. Renoir forces the viewerofhis early paintings into an intimacy that musthave seemed

(6)

inappropriate tothe bourgeoissalonvisitor.The sociologist Georg Simmel wasthefirst to describe the philistinegazeof the modern flaneur: empathic but aloof, he appraises potential pleasures on the basis of where his money will nethim the highest satisfaction.15Lise and hersleepy, melancholic expression musthave already felt too intrusive to him. In reality, itis his owngaze thatherstare intothe distance mirrors.

Then we also know Renoir as the painter of the anony mous city crowd, depicted invarious prominent locations. In the year of the 1867UniversalExposition,he stands on the quaide Conti— newly constructed under the direction of theprefect ofParis, Baron Georges-EugeneHaussmann—and depicts the viewonto the cupola of the Institut de France,thetemple of intellectualism. From the cu

pola, the Pontdes Arts runs across the picture,lead ing to thesouthern fayadeof the Louvre fig.6. Inthe foreground, shadows of passers-by on the Pont du Carrousel—behind the viewer—fall across the pic

ture. Or, inoneof his rare winter pictures—Renoir didnot likethe cold—he showsus skaters on the newlyinstalled, ice-covered lakein the Bois de Boulogne (cat. 13). In1869, he discovered La Grenouillere (roughly meaning“frog island”)togetherwithMonet,nearBougival, ata sharp bend of theSeinebeyond whichVersailles lies farther west by way of Marlyor Louveciennes. To theyoung Parisians, the place was like an improvised stage:ontwo firmly mooredboats adance floor, a bar, andbathing decks had been installed fig.4. Via narrow footbridges one could reach asmall, circular islandwithatree in the middle,and fromthere onewould access the boats. Here,elegant tourists mingled with dancingcouples and bathers, peoplefromthe near-by weekenders’ and pensioners’ cottagesinthe vicinity with city dwellers who hadcome via the new suburban train.16Evenbe

fore thefallof the Second Empire, Renoir wasalready idolizing the new middle classes,which would develop into the foundation ofthe state during the Third Republic,established in 1871 afterthedefeat of Napoleon III. The closing manifestoof their triumphcan beseen in George Seurat’s day-trippers, whichhe—agenerationyounger than Renoir—would show parading ona Seine isle near Asnieres, dehu manizedto thelikes of dolls. The painting, titled eJ Sunday Afternoon

on the Island ofLa GrandeJatte,was presented at the last Impressionist group exhibition in 1886 fig. 7.17Renoir’s passers-by never mergeintoa homogeneouscrowd asMonet’sdo, nor do they represent a colorful flock in which an individual consists of no more than several brushstrokes at a closer look. Renoir almost always fleshes out his couples, his

(7)

From Bohemia toArcadia

mothers, his groupsof girls in bright sunlight, his parading officers, his flaneurs and coquettes to an extent that their clothing and posture can beclearly distinguished. One could easilycomplete his paintings to group portraits. Youth, fashion, and elegance were just ascrucialas with the graphic illustrations in the increasingly popularmagazines.

Labor andold age neither occur in Renoir’s paintings ofthepictur

esque center ofParis nor in the depictionsof fashionable excursion destinations inthe suburbs. Renoir arrives at his masterpiece,Ball at the Moulin de laGalette, by combining intimate insight and anem

bracing overviewfig. i.

Around 1868, he had Lise—despite her being his mistress

pose armin arm with his friend and fellowpainter Alfred Sisley, whohimself was in a relationship with another woman,

Eugenie Lescouezec figTs.18 The result was the modern im ageof an engaged couple, as well as agenre portraiten

larged to life size. The painterpresentsthe gentleman’s caressing affectionandthe lady’s gratefulintimacyfrom the perspective of a close friend, who recognizes these gestures as habitual but none the less touching.

Finally, there are the paintings for which Renoir draws on classical tradition or modern exoticisms. These are neither after effects of his academic trainingwith Charles Gleyre,the painter of mythological idylls,19 nor premature evidence of a more conserva tivelate oeuvre. Rather,they run through theentirebody

of his work, perhaps with theexception of thecore years of his participation in Impressionism, which encompass the years from 1874 to 1881 at themost. It is probablynot Lise, ashas always beenmaintained,who stood model forhis Diana in 1867 fig?9, wherein Diana the huntress is sitting on

ariverbank, supplemented by ashot deer as an oversize still life (The National Gallery of Art,Washington, D.C.).Lise, however, modeled for abather in 1870—she has justremoved herclothes and is stepping into the waterin the posture of the Venus Pudica (Batherlrith a Griffon, MuseudeArte de Sao Paulo, see fig.30).20 In both paintings, classical an tiquity is overwritten withitsFrenchrefractions,withthememory of Diane de Poitiers, the famous courtesan, but also with Gustave Cour

bet’s opulentToung Womenonthe Banksofthe Seiner from1856,which the founder of realistpainting had forced into fashion

able, but overly tight corsets, nothinderingthe girl in the foreground from lookingat the viewer in a sleepy and lascivious way fig. 10. Already when we look at Courbet’s Toung Women, particularly atthe nearly deformed faceof theforemost figure, blinking at uslanguidly, not onlyour eyesbut also the other

(8)

senses seem to beinvolved.21 Renoir almost consist

ently endowsLise Trehot’s face withthevery same drowsy and melancholicvoluptuousness, especially when she poses for himas an odalisque in 1881, this timean obvioushomage to Eugene Delacroixtig. 11.

Thus,Renoirdoes notcontenthimself withinvoking offi

cially approved traditionsof the history of art that had become acces sible by means of books and illustrations.And above all, he does not bring in thepast toinsist on the rupturethat the presenthas performed withit, such as Manet does. Manet continuously shows us that art can never quitecatch up withmodernity: Olympia, the high-end pros titute lookingher client in theeye, is notjust asuccessor to the Venus ofUrbino—althoughshe,too, presumablybore the featuresof a courte san. As a “commodity through and through” (Baudelaire), she not only stirsfears ofsexuallytransmitted diseases,butshe presents her body as the epitome ofcapitalism itself.22 WhereasManet juxtaposes tradition toamodernity estranged fromtradition, Renoir makeshis toryextend untiltoday—everything is put into the presenttense. To him, Courbet, his contemporary,stands for tradition asmuch asthe VenusPudicadoes, Delacroix asmuchasManet—fromwhom Renoir borrowed aliaprima painting and the expressivechiaroscuro. Lise Trehot asamodel already ensures that Renoir’sbathingVenus is just ascontemporaryas the ladyin white shaded by aparasolfig. 5.

Yet anothertradition is conspicuously present in his mani festos ofthe “vie moderne”: the traditionof thefetes galantes—inspired by AntoineWatteau’sEmbarkationfor Cythera see fig. 31 andother idylls— is continued atLaGrenouillerefig. 4 and theMoulin de la Galettefig. 1.

Theisle of the blessed becomes a frog pond, and thedancing cafe close to Montmartre,named afterthe windmillandthe sweetwaffles that usedto be servedthere, is filled withcourteously restrained am

orous longings. At La Grenouillere, anybody can watch the bathers, without having to fear ofgrowing antlersand being torn to pieces byhis ownhounds, asbefell Actaeon when he beheld Diana andthe bathing nymphs. Not only does the eighteenth century live on in Re

noir’s idylls, but Arcadia as well. There, life in harmonywith nature is granted only to theshepherds with their flutes,not the visitorsfrom the cities, the decadents, such as Virgil’sGallusor Jacopo Sannazaro’s Simplizio, who are driven back to nature by an unre quited love.23 Happinessremains barred to the elegant, melancolic lute player in Giorgione’s (or Titian’s?) Pa storal Concerttig. 12—one of the most famous paintings in theLouvre—, whereas the flute-playing shepherd is truly happy, but obliviousof his state.24Being happyand being aware thereofseemto

(9)

be mutually exclusive. Watteau, Pater, and Lancret had already brought Arcadia, the elegiaccountry, intothe courtly feasts and el egant societies of theirtime.25And Renoir inscribes itinto his Ballat the Moulinde laGalette,wheresimplemiddle-class people areallowed to be longing and happy at thesame time, and are furthermoreper mitted to be aware of their happiness—though perhapsnot untilthey view themselves in Renoir’s paintings.

Renoir, the painter oferotic intimacy, the painterof the fashionable crowd andthe “modern life,” the painter of a tradition reaching until the present—all thesemeticulously elaborated identi

ties seem to mergeharmoniously in the end. Andyet even in hismost exuberantworks, in which everything seems to amount to complete fulfillment, we findnostalgiaand longing, asif happiness wereyetto come—or had already passed andcould only thus berecorded. Re

noir’s historical time opensinto the presentjust as his scenariosdo: his contemporaries constantly reproducea happiness thatis but a fleeting projectionontothe present—but nevertheless inscribed into an ever

present history. Like the vibrantlight dividingintodappledpatches beneath the foliage,so dopresentand past, fulfillment and longing oscillate in Renoir’s paintings. Itmaybe happiness—but it is anerv oushappiness.

Biographical Stereotypes: theWorking-Class Boy, the Painter of Female Beauty,the Frenchman

If we want to gain a deeperunderstanding of the modernidyllin Renoir’s early work, the first thing we have to doisdeconstruct the cliches surrounding hispersonality,the myth “Renoir.” “Who was Renoir?” his contemporariesas well as modern art historians have askedthemselves.But the chief witnesses to havewritten about Re

noir from a biographicalperspectivehave passed on an image that was heavily fashioned by the painter himself. Sincethe1890s, he had presented himself asaforerunner of conservativemodernism—and he was followed on thatpath by youngerpainters such asMaurice Denis and Aristide Maillol around 1900. By means oflaborious biographical research, Jean-Claude Gelineau26 and later Marc Le Coeur27 have revealed that the self-portrayalof the artist conceals a substantialamount of factsabout his life. Surely anyone can be discreet, but Renoirpushes his precariousexistence in the Parisian Bohemia into the background, in favorofhisbeginnings asan arti san. Renoir’ssecrecy concerning decisive stages ofhis careershows that he himself has contributedtothe myth long established in the

(10)

MichaelF. Zimmermann

art-historicalliterature. Even if we do notdeemthe recentresearch asufficient answer to the question ofwho Renoir really was, it does at leastbring upthe question of how Renouard—as his name appears in early documents28—couldbecome “Renoir.” HowhasRenoirman aged to construct his ownmyth?

It is common knowledge in art history that the artdealer Ambroise Vollard—who had been anadvocateof Cezanne sincethe late 1890s, andsoon afteralso of Picassoand the Cubists—has had a decisiveinfluence onour image of Renoir.29 In1919, Vollardpub lisheda lavish and abundantly illustrated monographthat was trans

latedintoGermanasearlyas1924,into English in 1925, and received asecondedition in 1938.30 In this book, Vollard reports of conversa tions he had with the artist, and he emphasizesthe authenticity of his reports by passing offlarge parts asverbatimtranscriptsof Renoir’s accounts,occasionallyalso in theform ofinterviews.In the German translation by Alfred Dreyfus, extensive passages thatappear as a continuous monologue in the original are presented as interviews,by the insertion of shortquestionssupposedly asked byVollard. This, of course, is fiction; Jean Renoir, the artist’sson, confirmed in his mem

oirs that his father had pulled thedealer’s leg. He used to say: “Not bad, Vollard’s book on Vollard.”31It is thus vital to breakthrough Vol

lard’s claims of authenticity.

At thebeginning ofhis book, Vollarddescribeshowhegot toknowRenoirin 1894:he presents the painter of womenassurround ed bywomen ofproletarian aswell as bourgeois origin. According to Vollard, the artist’s housemaid had thelooks of a bohemienne, but Ma

dame Renoirhad been as“buxom and amiable asone of those pastels by Perroneau of some good lady of the time ofLouisXV.” To him, the difference between the women reflected thepainter’sinternal contra

dictions: “It was the first timethatIhad ever seenhim. He was a spare man, sharp-eyed, andvery nervous,giving one the impression that he neverstood still.”32 BarbaraWhite mighthave been misled by Vollard when she tells us of thephysicalcontrastbetweenthepainter and his wife,Aline—afarmer’s daughter from Burgundyandeighteen years younger than he—in 1973:“WhileRenoirwas very thin, she wasfat.”

From nothing but thisquote, she already infers his attitude asthatof a“well-meaningmale chauvinist.”Indeed, Vollard stylizes their first meeting into the introduction of apainter of natural femininity and motherhood—justas White seeshim:“To Renoir, the nude woman is sexuality, maternity andcomfort.”33 However, to the eyes ofthe art dealer, the nervous andfrail painter also had femaletraits himself:

histidy studio imparted the“impression ofan almost feminine neat ness.”34 Thus he was to havefelthisway intotheelement offeminin

(11)

ity. Supposedly,any woman suited himas amodel: the housemaid, womenwhose complexionrefracted light well—anybut women of fashion. “I don’tsee how artists can paint those over-bred females they call society women! Have you ever seena society woman whose hands were worth painting?” Even Raphael’s Venus inthe Villa Farne- sina, beseeching Jupiter, had been robust: “She looks like a great, healthy housewife snatchedfor amoment from her kitchen to pose for Venus! That’s why Stendhal thought that Raphael’s women were common and gross.”35 As Tamar Garbalready observed in 1992,this is howthe myths of Renoir’s “pure”painting havebeenconstructed:

the female body is natural, the pigmentis feminine, and the actof painting—doubtlessly imparting physical pleasure—is masculine.36

Then Vollard gives a detailed account of Renoir’s youth asaporcelain painter, his industrious, steady life as a craftsman, his likes and dislikes. He tells ofhis sharing Charles Gleyre’s studiowith Sisley,Monet, and Bazille, episodes thatare included in any book on Renoir today. And the conversation alwayscomes back to women, models(although Renoir does not speak of LiseTrehot), eroticism, andhappiness. Vollard introducesthe myth ofthe unsophisticated childof nature by telling anecdotes of the painter’sliterary prefer ences: his wife wanted to readanovel to him in the evening as itwas their habit;they looked for LaDame deMonsoreau by Alexandre Du mas pere_J, a chivalrous story from the time of Henri III. But they were notabletofind the book. Thentheir talk came to Baudelaire’sFleurs duMai: “I detest that book above all others!” the painter was to have said. Also LaDameaux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils must have ranked among the decadent readingRenoir wanted nothing to do with: “Never!” he protested. “Idetest everything the younger Dumas haswritten, and that book more than all the others. I’vealways had a horror ofsentimental harlotry!”37 The artisticideals ofthe past, on theother hand, headored.He saw themembodied byJean Goujon’s nymphs on theFountain of the Innocentsnear Les Halles—“He has purity, naivete, elegance; and atthe same timethe formitselfis amaz

inglysolid”38—aswellas by Francois Boucher. Vollard tells usof the highpraiseRenoir heldfor Boucher’s Diana Leaving Her Bath see fig.33.

By means of such seemingly authentic quotations, the art dealer presentsthe artist as a crude, proletarian child,who hastediously workedhis wayupto the ideals ofclassical beauty. Even this was per haps not a progress, but a reversion, asRenoir cultivated thefamily myth thatthey weredescended from nobilityby thelineage of his grandfather, whose family hadbeen killed during the ReignofTer

ror. Renoir, nervous anddreamy in life, disciplined at work—these are the characteristics by which his brother Edmond had already

(12)

described him in 1880 in a leading Parisian journal forluxury and modern culture.Apparently theonly way theartist was ableto calm hisnerves was byconfronting his subject, by facingthe likewise nerv

ous light“en plein air.”39

Vollard’s book was byno means the firstmonograph de

voted toRenoir. The distinguished German artcritic andhistorian JuliusMeier-Graefe hadalready presentedathorough andsophisti cated work on the artist in 1911, in which he gavea well-conceived in terpretation of both his personality and his work.40 Therein, he looks atRenoir against thebackground of the contemporary avant-gardes, hisown elaborate theory ofart, aswell as Vitalism, aphilosophical trend at theturnof thecentury,whose most prominent representa

tives were Friedrich Nietzsche in Germanyand Henri Bergson in France.In his bookModernArt: Being a Contribution to aNtfv System of

^Aesthetics—first published in 1904—Meier-Graefehad elevated the un

concealed, visibletrace ofthe brush andtheuse of impasto colorsnot onlytothe trademarkofthe artist,but to the hallmark ofmodernism, which was to focus on theemancipationof the individual. To him, as to Emile Zola before him,theworld we perceive hasalways been the conception ofoutstanding individuals who have been ableto impose their way of viewing the world onto others. And these individuals nowwere praised withthesame impetus withwhich Nietzsche had celebrated the will to power.41 With its elaborated,oftenextravagant use oflanguage, Meier-Graefe’s work forms a remarkable contrast to Vollard’s journalistic style. Forbiographical information,however, Meier-Graefe drew on the book of the artdealer, his interpretation thus being unmistakably influenced by Vollardas well—and even by Renoir himself, whodoubtlessly knew how to manipulate the critic aswellas the dealer. It is in theinterplay between VollardandMeier- Graefethat the myth “Renoir” took shape.42

To Meier-Graefe, Renoir is morethan the painterof“me lodious rhythms..., theFragonard of our days,” an artistof balance betweenthe “old, whichwesum up under thebroadconcept ofthe Baroque,” and modernity. The critic does conclude that Renoir projectsthepastinto the present, but he goes beyondthis:thepaint eris seenasboth artisan and naif, and by means ofthis alliance, cul ture was tohave found its way back to nature. Thisalsodetermines

“Renoir’s relationship to the great artists of histime.... He is the most natural of them.More natural than Courbet, in spiteof—or per haps due to—Courbet’s naturalist dogma.More natural than Manet, Cezanne, and Degas, howeverprecious theirinsights into the na

ture that the artisthas to seek may be. Because ... heis the least sophisticated of them,because ... a child’s smile glistensfromhis

(13)

FromBohemia toArcadia

works, a primitive, irresistible sound of nature. Theotherpainters are childrenof ourtime, children of struggle.They wrestlewith na

ture, usurp it. The demonic distorts their gestures. This one man seemsbornwithnature,like an ancient Greek, aPoussin, aMozart.

He paints just as the bird sings, as the sun shines, asflowersbloom.

Never has art taken shape so artlessly, like a suckling reaching for its mother’s breast. Instinct becomes creation.”43 Meier-Graefe contrasts Renoir as child of naturewith thePromethean character of the modern, whichEnlightenment and Romanticism, as wellas the symbolist decadents, had invokedsince Goethe and Holderlin.44 Among the decadents ofhis time, whom Max Nordau spoke ofin1892, he sees aprimitive in Renoir—aprimitiveof remarkablecraftsman ship.45His craftsmanship, granting himakind ofurban primitivism, was the secret of Renoir’s art to his old friend and fellow combatant Georges Riviere. Inamonograph published in 1921, full of anecdotes and written in the style of memoirs, he draws the picture ofan idyllic precapitalist Paris, an image still evoked by later socio-historical art historians, in particular Timothy Clark, of asociety before the living areas of the various socialclasseshad beensegregatedby the rede signof the capital under Haussmann. “Renoir’s parentswere arti sansof the kindwhichcouldbe seen in large numbers in the France of old. Modest, frugal, withatastefor beautiful things.” Rivierealso mentions the walks the young artisan took in Louveciennes with his mother,with her“exquisitesensitivity.”46

It is such mythsthat constitute Meier-Graefe’s imagery in his portrayal of the young Renoir. The boy painted his firstpicture for an older porcelain painter: “He painted stoutlyawayat it. It was a por

trait of Evebefore the Fall.” The artisan advisedthat“theboy should becomeapainter,for as a decorator of porcelainhe would be able toearn 12 or15francs a day at most.” He predicted him a brilliant future.The resources for an appropriate training of the painter of the still-innocent Eve, however, werelacking, so forthe time being, Re

noir had to carry on workingasaporcelain painter, laterasa painter of shopblinds, “transparentpainted curtains.” The decadenceof capitalism turned the craftsman into an artist, aprimitive among the modernists: “Renoir would no doubt have remained aporcelain painter foreverif the invention of porcelain printing had notmateri ally damaged the manual technique. Yet again,the demise of a com

mon good had led tothe benefitof anindividual.”47

Meier-Graefe’s interpretation of the downfallof manual porcelainpainting—triggered by the use of preprinted stencils—as asymptom of the “demise of acommon good” seems rather heavy- handed. In 1904, in theintroduction to his^Modern Art, hehad con-

(14)

strutted a contrast between theso-called Raumkunstof the powerful corporationsand themodernart ofthe emancipatedindividual, ex

pressinghimself by the liberal use ofbrushstrokes. Art Nouveau and Jugendstil—which Meier-Graefe still had passionately promotedin the late nineteenth century,togetherwith socialist utopias aimed at overcoming the opposition between manual labor and industrial production—represented Raumkunst. In 1904, even Hagia Sophiawas Raumkunsttohim. Itscounterpart isthe individualism of the modern painter, which had successively unfolded along the line of the alia prima paintingof lateTitian and Franz Hals,Rembrandt and Gustave Courbet, ManetandMaxLiebermann.48 When, in 1911, he writes that the “demise ofa commongood” had turned into the “benefit ofan individual,” heis alludingto the growing contrast between the de

clineofRaumkunst and the triumphof picturesque painting in mod ernindividualism.49

However, Renoir was to have aspecial status in thisdevel opment, and certainly not onlydue to the foundation of his technique in craftsmanship. Histrade also anchored hisvision in a collective spirit: hisbeginnings as an artisanaswell ashis consciousness of his talent“setagoal for hisromantic daydreams andensured him a rare virtue among modern artists: modesty.” At the same time, Renoir was looking for meaning in art history. “‘Moi je reste dans lerang.’

I liked his wordswithoutknowing exactly how to interpret them.” If he hadconfronted nature directly, he would have followed the path of an individualistic aesthetics, justas the Impressionists,justasMonet did. “Renoirdid notsee himself asbelonging to the Impressionists andneither should we counthim among them. He categorically re jects the veryprinciplewhich iscrucialto Monet: the unconditional respectof nature.Nature, he once told me, doesnot helpyou in creat ing art. Whateveryou do with nature, you willinevitably end upat an impasse.” But where did Renoir find his inspirationthen? “The ex planation he gave mewouldastound manywho seehimasachildof nature.... ‘Aumusee,parbleu!’ was his reply.”s°

Inthe eyes ofMeier-Graefe, thiscontradictionisthe key achievement ofthe “child of nature” ofarthistory. To him, Renoir’s nighimpossiblesynthesisof cultureand nature seemed likea mira

cle; had not nature always—and particularly since the Enlighten ment-been seen asthe counterpartto culture, as a placeoforigin to which any attempt of return wouldprovefutile?Thismiraclehad become possiblein thecaseof Renoir forhe wasnot amodernist, not a decadent, not a latecomer whohad atrophied inthe division of laborand been spoilt by the Babylonian confusion of urbanlife.

In his painting, Meier-Graefe reencounters the long-lost art of the

(15)

collective, precisely because he doesnotsee Renoir asa bourgeois individualist. A member of themiddle class thus conjures upthe col

lective art of a worker: “Our time has intellects. We makeamazing analysesandreduce the world to acouple offigures. And here,outof thevapor of the city, there is someone whocreates agardenwhere milk and honeyflowandpeople walk whohave nothad to witness the declineofhumanity. Butthey are notmere phantasms: he cre ates them out of fleshandblood,thesunlight warming their skin; he creates themfromour godless, materialistic world,naiveasa Giotto, exuberant as a Rubens.... Who would have thoughtthat positivism would be expressed so overtlyinour days, that the country of the great skeptics and blagueurs wouldproduce such a flagrant testimony of theradiant affirmation of life? Onemaywell call it a miracle—and ahappy miracle itis indeed.”51 Accordingto Meier-Graefe,thismira cle could have onlytaken place in France, the one nation so naturally cultured that itwouldsucceed in reconciling Babylon withArcadia:

“He is thepurestFrenchman ofhis generation.”52 Ina newspaper ar

ticleof 1928, Meier-Graefe yet again elevates Renoir to the last rem nantofan anti-individualistic collective art: “Renoirwas the first to see throughthequestionable social aspects ofmodern art,the ‘splen did isolation’ofindividualism, and—asfarasitispossible for anyone living in ourdays—to renouncethe self andseek the common.”53

Needlessto say, this so panegyricallypraised andmythi

cized “Renoir” hasalready beenshaped bythe classicist ideas of the retro-avantgardes. But Meier-Graefe avoids the word“classicism.” The emphasis of hisbookis not on the matureandthe late Renoir, but on the worksof the 1860sand 1870s,which were the most inter esting to him. The value ofhis analysis lies in the intertwining of the myth“Renoir” with a detailedpoetological analysis of his work. An aspect the critic comes back to again and again is the “intimate com

pliance of form and feeling”—which he, of course, can only conjure up imploringly: “It showsitself in an extraordinary stability, a rare andvivid fullness of his figures, and givesafirmstructureto theart

ist’sidyll.”54Space, relief, andplasticity are thekey words in his em

phatic descriptions.

Meier-Graefe stressesthe simplicity of Renoir’s pictorial resources. The critic’s vitalistic pathosaswellas his analyticaldepth complement Vollard’sanecdotal andconversational stylewell.Par

ticularly in Germany, theworks of both have substantiallyshaped the imageof Renoirsince the 1920s—whereas Francehasyet to discover the richness of Meier-Graefe’s analyses. The conservative avant- gardesof the1920s have naturallyalso left a mark on the myth we oweto Meier-Graefe,Vollard, and Riviere. SinceJeanCocteau had

(16)

proclaimedtheretour a I’ordrein1917, initiallyonlyin order to reconcile Cubism—spurned astoo German and too complicated—with the espritfran^ais,there had been attempts to bringthe progressive spirit of the avant-gardestogether with tradition and to obtain support for this projectamong the “fathers” of modernart.55 In 1920, Andre Lhote, searching for artiststhat consult nature not with their eyes but withtheirspirit, came across Renoir:“Like Cezanne, he discov ered the divineprinciplesof balance,ofwhich heavails himself in order to master the economyofthe microcosm thata painting consti

tutes.”56 In1931,Robert Rey included Renoir in astudy devoted to the

“renaissance ofclassicalfeeling,” a book that emphasizes the anti- individualistic characterof modern classicist art.57 Alreadyin the 1890s,conservativeneo-traditionalists such asDenis and Maillol had adoptedRenoiras amodel; the 1920s would pick up from there.Just recently, in amajor exhibition, tribute was paid to Renoir asaleading representativeof the “retro-gardes.”58

However, it will not suffice to look atRenoir’s workfrom the perspective of hislate conceptions ofart, and to condemn or praise him as altogether backward-looking. For his art is not some kind of neo-historicism, but rather a de-historicizing strategy in or der to bring together the distant with the recent past,and bothwith the present,asMaier-Graefehas recognized. This is also in line with the strategies by which the retro-gardespresenttheir theory of art.

Notlong ago, it has been noted that artists, from MauriceDenis to the masters of the twentieth century and the retour dI’ordre, like topresent eternal truths aboutart—oftendownright truisms—by means ofaph

orisms.Indoing so, they frequently build on theFrench moralists of the seventeenthcentury—and naturallyargue against theintellectual style inwhich theavant-gardesexplaintheirartisticlanguage,deriv ing itnowfrom recent discoveries, nowfrom theperspective ofthe modern,now fromthe fourth dimension, and now againfroma vitalistic thrill of speed.59Renoir’snostalgic admiration ofthe “old” arts andcraftsfits into this frame quitewell. In an anonymous letter to the journal L’Impressionniste, published onthe occasion of the Impression ists’ exhibition in1877, he deploresthe ugliness and triteness of the new Louvre, whereas the oldparts of the building, despite featuring the samebasic structure, he considersas beautiful testimonies ofex

perienced craftsmanship; he also saw thiscontrast between the Paris Opera and Gothic monuments. In 1883 and 1884, Renoirwas working on a grammarofart, and in 1910 he wrote an introductionto Cennino Cennini’sbook on late medieval painters.60 His enmitytoward indus

trial production canbe readas a Marxist criticismonthe alienation ofman fromhislabor,by which the English Artsand Craftsmove

(17)

From Bohemiato Arcadia

ment—whosegoals Renoir doubtlessly supported—must have been impressed. But this criticismwould laterbreak intoa conservative incantation ofeternal artistic values, forwhich the late Renoir is mo nopolized—andcertainly with good reason.

Neo-traditionalism andthe retour al'ordre haveshaped the image ofRenoir as the texts ofhis contemporarieshaveprogressive ly claimed theirplace inthe history of art. Renoir as an outsider to the middle classes, which thusdeemed him the child ofnature par excellence—this myth has survived untiltoday. Robert L. Herbert describes himasthe working-class boy who did not experience the decadence of luxury buthadtopresshisnose upagainst shopwin dows and hopeto partake in that dream world one day. What was to others insipid habit, partof theennui, this particularlyParisian weari ness, was tohim the prophecy of aworld of commodities that could grant true happiness.61 According to Adriani,Renoir indulged in “the pleasurable sides of a bourgeois ideal of living” and “was not willing topass judgment on the injustice of the world.”62 Paul Tucker sees even the artist’s nervousness as founded inthe fear of falling back intopoverty, afear that the social climber can neverquite overcome.63 This socio-historical analysis surelyis justified,but Renoir himself seems to havedownright cultivated his image asaworking-class boy andachildof nature.Not onlyin hislife and in his self-portrayal,but also in his work, he hasreconciledart andcommerce. His vision of happiness, however, has byno means always been backward-looking:

in hisearly work, itis even intothe most perfect idylls that he inserts allusionsto precariousness andprostitution—circumstances thathe had by nomeansyet escaped.

The Intimate Made Public: Bohemia and theArt of Living

We maybe tempted to set aside Marc Le Coeur’s researchon the young Renoir and his relationship to Lise Trehot asthe indiscre tionsof a genealogist,attempting to presentthe painter’s friendship with his ancestor, Jules Le Coeur—nine yearsolderthanRenoir—in the proper light.Has he not always stressed thatitwas Le Coeur who broke with the libertinepainterin 1873? Nevertheless,his research gives us a different picture ofRenoir than we have obtained from Meier-Graefe, Vollard, Riviere,aswell asfromhisson, the filmdirec tor Jean Renoir.Le Coeur does not portray Renoir as an artisan and child of nature,but as a bohemian, having endured a lifeof poverty and precariousness, of failedand rejected fatherhood. Evenwithout such knowledge, we can perceivetracesofRenoir’s bohemian life in

(18)

hisImpressionistpaintings. Nevertheless,it isa different image of the artistthat thus emerges.The child of nature, the pioneerof the

“renaissance ofclassical feeling”64 had a dark side, similar to thatof Jean-Jacques Rousseau.65He did notonlypaint hismodel Lise, but also lovedher—until1872or 1873, whenshe became involved with anarchitect whomshelater married. Renoir had two children with Lise, both of them apparentlynot acknowledged by theirfather: a sonborn in 1868,of whom no trace remains,and adaughter born in 1870, whom the artist inquired aboutdiscreetlythroughouthis lat er life.66 In Bohemia, the driving forces were not only povertyand ambition—the manifestationsofa stereotypical heroism which had been partof theartist’s cliche sinceRomanticism.67Italsoinvolved precarious romance, the belated founding of families, as well as their failure.Not everyone succeeded in ennobling the firstchapters of hislife by means of the later ones.68 Forwomen and illegitimate children,the risk of getting caught in a lifetime of precariousness was particularly great. Renoir himself kept a lifelong silence about his affair with Lise.

Thepainter paid tribute to his bohemian period in amani festopicture: a landscape withtwo nudes—as AnneDistel has dis

covered, it is presumably thepicture hanging on thewall in thetop right corner in Frederic Bazille’s famouspainting Bazjlle’s Studio;9 rue La Condamine_> see fig. 56—which had been rejected by theSalon in 1865.Heprotested against thisrejection witha painting of bohemian life in Mariotte, a poverty-stricken village near Barbizon inthe Forest ofFontainebleau see fig.53.69Quite similarly toCourbet’s eAfter Dinner atOmans (Museedes Beaux-Arts, Lille), it depicts the moment of rest after a mealin a rustic setting. But in Renoir’s painting, the table is being cleared,anda relaxed conversation isabout tounfold.Abeard

ed man sitting to the right hasthe newspaper L’Svenement in front of him, in whose pages Zola had defended Manet and Monet in the spring of1866.70 Heis holding a cigarette paper between his fingers and turningto an unknown, clean-shavenmanopposite himwhois listening to his words interestedly and amusedly—as Le Coeur has been able to show, he is ateacher and thus only a visitor to the bohe

mianworld.71Behind them, another listener is standing,remarkably similarto the man speaking, likewise listening and reaching into his tobacco pouch. Renoir’s rather vague memoriesof the scene make it difficult toidentify the individuals. The bearded men mightbe iden

tified asSisley, Le Coeur, or even Renoirhimself. The old woman leaving the scene, ofwhom weonly see the back of her head next to the speaker’s hat, is the owner; the girl who is attentively focused on lifting a huge pile ofdishes withtwo cups stacked ontop is Nana,Re

(19)

FromBohemia to Arcadia

noir’s very young housemaid,whose easymorals he seemsto have emphasized in his conservations with Meier-Graefe and Vollard.As Meier-Graefe observes in 1911, the painting isnot only devoted to Bo hemia,but also designedinan airy andnaive bohemianstyle: “Itis a very casualimprovisation in shades of brown, paintedwithout any ambition. The heads seem to be the productofplayful brushstrokes, just asthe droll poodle, which a child could have drawn. But the childlike succeeds inportraying what often eludes consciousness.

One can feelthesepeople, not only the people themselves but what they have in common, the natureoftheir togetherness, the essence of theirharmlessexistence.”72 If we compare Renoir’s composition to Courbet’s eAfter Dinner, it becomes clear thatthis togethernesswas irritable and fragile:Courbet showsahalted moment in the stream of time,but in Renoir’s paintingit is activity whichdominates,the tense atmospherebetween the painter’s friends,the concentrated action ofclearing the table—a sceneinvolving MotherAntonythat seemsto beappended in the backgroundas a second layer of the composition.

But above all, there arepuzzling forms behind the group, amongthem anoversized head, a musical score,and atext. These elementsrepresent the predecessors of the group,asthe painter re ported toVollard rathermystifyingly: “The motifs in the background of thepicture were borrowedfrom sketches actually paintedon the wall. These ‘frescoes,’unpretentious but often quite successful, were the work of artists habituesof theplace.Imyself painted the profile of Murger, which appears in [The InnofMereAntony]highup at theleft.”73 The mention of himself in this quote isstriking: Renoirpaystribute tothewriterHenri Murger, whosince themid-i84oshad regularly published humorousandsentimentalanecdotes inLe Corsaire, taken from his observations in studios,brasseries, andcafes. Hisplay La Vie^

deBoheme, writtentogether with Theodore Barriere and published in 1849, as wellashisnovel Scenesde la Vie deBoheme, publishedtwo years later, were based ontheseanecdotes. Inthepreface to the play,Mur

ger reflects on thename “Bohemia,” originally usedfor the country from which gypsieswerethought to originate, but which now desig nated a lifestyletypicalin Paris sincethe Romanticperiod—a lifestyle of people who possess nothing buttheir belief inart, aplace where the gap between the Academie and thepoorhouse or the morgue is but a fine line. Thisconcept of Bohemiahadexisted since Villon, Moliere,Tasso,and even Shakespeare, but it had grownasa result of the “martyrology ofmediocrity” as well as the self-chosenout siderstatus of “amateurs,” whom Murgerdespised.74 WhenRenoir alluded to bohemian circles,thereference to Murger had alreadybe

(20)

come acliche.Later on, starting from itsopening nightin spring 1896, Giacomo Puccini’sLa Bohemey—forwhich Murger’s material had beenworked into a libretto by Luigi Illica andGiuseppeGiacosa— would become oneofthemost popular operas of all time.

In1866, however, the idyll still seemed more fragile than in Renoir’s later recollections.The diary of the brothers Goncourt, who visited Mother Antony’s inn in1863,tells usofthegriminess of theplace, where a libertine society would have gathered around three o’clock to havetheir lunch,amidstwomen, wine, and song.75 Murger himselfhad frequented the inn in Mariotte, accompanied byhis dog;

perhaps this is what thepoodle, looking at the viewer inastonishment, refersto. Unlike the dog sleeping under the chair inCourbet’spaint ing,thispoodle,forall that it isharmless,seems to be guarding theac cess to the scene. Butabove all, the strange shapesfrom the bohemian world, oversize and tumultuous, loom abovethethree art enthusiasts threateningly. Later on, Renoir seems tohaveentirely rewritten the story of his bohemian life. In1971, HelmutKreuzerdevoted an in- depthstudy tothe Parisian Bohemia anditstreatment in literature.

He distinguishesbetweena green, black,and red understanding ofit:

“The first reflects the glamor of bohemian life (youth, freedom, gai

ety, colorfulness), thesecondits misery (poverty, vice, desperation), the third itsdefianceand struggle.” Religious concepts are implied:

purgatory, paradise, and perdition. Insubsequentresearch, the con

trast between the Romantic perception ofBohemiaas freedom and enjoyment of life and the hopeless hope of the multitude of ambitious writers, curators,soldiers, journalists,and artists—in short, between Bohemiaaccording to MurgerandBohemia according to theauthor and art critic Jules-AntoineCastagnary—hasbeenelaborated on.76 In hisrecollections,Renoir changed sidesfromadifferentiatedpicture, in which Murger’s idyll and Castagnary’s criticism were joined,to Puccini’s immaculateand romanticizedidyll.

Without doubt, this is also true forthe portraits ofLise Trehot. Hisrelationshipto the model was in no wayapurely private matter. Even today, werecognize her in numerous paintings and can reproducetherolesshe played, justas we can reproducethe roles that Manet’s famous model Victorine Meurent played—as Olympia(1863, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, Salonof 1865), in Dejeuner sur I’Herbey (1863, Museed’Orsay, Paris, Salondes Refuses 1863), as Woman Tvith a Parrot (1866,TheMetropolitanMuseum ofArt, New York), or even in down right travesties: asThe Fifer in a military band (1866, Musee d’Orsay, Paris) and asa torero (JflZ/e Victorine Meurent in theCostume ofan £spa- da, 1862, The MetropolitanMuseum ofArt, New York).77 Indeed, the most famous portraitof Renoir’smodeleven bears her name:Lisej

(21)

FromBohemia toArcadia

^vith a Parasol fig?5.In 1868, Zola regarded her as a spiritual “sister” to Monet’s Camille—who had becomeknown due to a portrait painted the year before—and praised her with the remark that shewas “one ofour women,or infact rather one of our mistresses.” The writer in tuited the allusion to aprivateaffair.78 The “great truth and the happy pursuitofthe modern” portrayed in thefigure with bright sunshine collecting in her white dress was so over-articulate that a contem

porary caricaturist, Andre Gill, satirized her as a white tambourine with an umbrella. Other graphicartists,suchasHenriOulevay,exag geratedthe contrast between the shadowedface and the brilliantly white appearance. In anycase,the dominantbrightnessunderlines the shadowy melancholy in Lise’s face. She looksaside,justas Odette in MarcelProust’s Du Cote de Che^Swann (1913), who may have sought the eyes ofSwann’s rival, de Forcheville, while Swann was still trying to get a glimpse of her heartwarmingBotticelli smile.

Meier-Graefe never tiredofpraising thepainting. “Against amighty tree trunk, onwhich several patches of sun gleam like nacre, the lady in white appearsasif taken from afairy tale.Her white is the wonderful white of ourgrandmothers’ muslins, scented andtranspar

ent.Itlets the moresolid white of theundergarment shine through.

Likea cloud it envelops the wholefigure, running down herbeautiful armsuptoher hand... Yet anothertone of white is found in thenarrow -brimmedhat, and finally, mostbeautiful of all: her skin.” Meier- Graefe ratesRenoir higher than Courbet and Manet, higher eventhan Velazquez: “Manet’s high-strung subjectivism did nothave timefor fairy tales. Hiseyes,devouringeverything visible at lightning speed, failed to catchtheinvisible,which Renoir feels and knows howto im

part, and which is indispensableif bare flesh is to betransformed into lifelikegirls and women.”79 The viewer becomes justas familiarwith Liseaswith Manet’sVictorine or Monet’s Camille.Monet hadoften painted Camille,hislater wife. Zola emphaticallypraised his painting of an elegant Camille absorbedin thought, exhibitedin the Salon of 1866: according to him, “this young woman, who seeminglymerges with the wall, is seen aswiththe eyes of“a longtime friend, and un

like in fashionable painting, even herheavy greendress tells us who thiswoman is”—at any rate not a “doll.” Segolene Le Men has recently described how the public was able to follow the novel of Camille in Monet’s paintings,unfolding fromexhibition to exhibition, likein a play.80Monet’s “family novel” was brought to life again by hisfriend Renoirinthe 1870s, asseveralitemsof thisexhibition display (cat. 28, 29, 31,32). Taking all models fromVictorine to Lise in consideration, it isnot only private affairs that are madepublic here, butmodern private life itself, presented in allits conflicts and contradictions.

(22)

Renoirshowsus Lise, the “mistress of our time,” inmany roles.Per hapsit is already aforetasteof the euphemistically termed “art of liv ing” that we are allowed here,under which later avant-gardes experi mented withalternative concepts of partnership and sexuality, from the menage a trois to the communes of the 1960s.81 A year after her first appearance, Lisewastobe found in the Salon again,thistime in a painting plainly titledIn Summer (cat. 11). While shehad embodied spring the year before, now her forlorn gazeatthe viewer, her loose hair, the blouse nearly slipping offhershoulder standfor thelethargy of midsummer. Melancholy and erotic delusion haveentered anal

most lascivious alliance.82 Meier-Graefe was considerably lessen

thusiastic aboutits “cold putty-gray color.”83 Around the same time, Lise Trehot appears as Sisley’s pretend fiancee in TheEngaged. Coupler

fig.8. Even beforeRenoir presented her as an oriental odalisquefig. 11

andfeatured her several times in a kind ofParisian harem (Parisian WomeninAlgerian Dress, 1872, The National Museumof Western Art, Tokyo), he leads usintothe intimatelifeof this young woman again andagain. Such nuances can be perceivedin The Engaged Couple, too:

his friend, entirely depictedin shades of blackandwhite, isleaning toward the model somewhatpossessively,whileLise, aware of his closeness, looks up indecisively. The orange and yellow colors of her dress underline her unconcealed sensuality, while he merges into the landscape,part of the scenery like thebackground of a photographic portrait.Lise’s melancholicvoluptuousness and her tendency to avert her eyes from theviewer can betracedthroughoutall of her pictures (cat.8-11,14-16,25).The viewer is invited intoa vaguely displayedin timacy: neither thatof the naturalistic novel, nor the Proustian social satire, this is a private life thathas beenput beforeus, alifeas it was livednot only in bohemiancircles, but also in large parts of a society inwhich male adultery was tolerated, regardedasnatural.InRenoir’s work, Lise Trehotbringstogetherthecontradictions of Arcadia and Bohemia, ofintimacy and its prevention by society.

But even the seemingly cheerful visionsofmodern love that Renoir painted in these years reflect the duality of Eros and Thanatos. As an example,wemaychoosethe painting La Loge, which Renoir submitted to the firstImpressionist group exhibition—one of the firstworks in which he publiclyrevealed his unique talent for ar

rangingmodern life in stagedportraits see fig.83. His contemporaries unanimously praised the masterpiece.84 Castagnary ambiguously de

scribes how “thiswoman, inthe evening, in artificial light,wearing a low-cut dress and gloves, made up, arose in her hair, arose between her breasts, evokes a phantasm.” In this lady, a “black andwhite cocotte [prostitute] ” acritic by the name of Jean Prouvaire saw the

(23)

epitomeof what awaitedthe youngladiesviewing the picture:“Look here,young ladies, and behold what willbecome of you. Your cheeks made up pearlywhite, your eyes lit up with a passionate buttrite flame,goldenbinoculars in your hand, youwill beattractive but fea tureless, delicate but stupid. This lady, who is aslittleinterested inthe play being performed as in the gentleman sitting next to her, is your future, and Ifearyouare not even dismayedby it.”Prouvaire called himself the “commentator,”probably after a figurein Victor Hugo’s novel LesMiserables(1862),alover of beautiful things, who is confront ed with prostitution aftergoing to the theater on hisbirthday.

At the same exhibition, Renoir also presented his Dancer (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), whoseethereal beauty welike to contrast with thatof the ballet dancer—characterized by the cunning meansof social anthropology as a futureprostitute—

whom Degas presented in 1881, a rather smaller than life-size, colored wax sculpture(National Galleryof Art,Washington, D.C.).85 Renoirwaspraised for this paintingas well: Marc deMontifaud com

pared the girl to Peri, a Persianfairy-taleprincess, whofed onlyon the scent of alotusblossom. Prouvaire, however,bringstheshadow of venal love into this so fragrant scene.86 He seems to be describ

ingDegas’s dancer rather thanRenoir’s when he refers toBanville’s story of a modern Mignon, published in 1866, describingadancer at the Opera,the daughterof a cosmetics saleswoman: “With her dark red hair, heroverly pale skirt and overly red lips she makes us think of the ‘thirteen-year-old woman’ Theodorede Banville described socruelly in his Parisiennes de Paris.As a result of work taken on too early, herlegs have already become heavy and her feet are not deli

cateenough for her pink silk shoes: the lean, longarms, however, are stillthose of achild ... A little girl?Probably. A woman?Perhaps.A young girl? Never.” Not onlyin thispicture ofan “opera rat,” butalso in a nude portrait ofaboy paintedin 1868 (cat. 12), Renoir develops the drama of puberty.

In his most famous painting,Ball atthe Moulin de la Gaieties fig. 1, Renoir leads usintotheworldofordi narypeople, or rather into an unclear ambience inwhich all classes mix: workers and prostitutes, established art

istsandbohemians. Hisfriend Riviere described the large, lively tab

leauasasophisticated social studyandopen-air historypainting as if he wanted to refute thewidespread stereotype thatImpressionism was a style ofpainting capturing butfleeting impressions.87The con

temporaryresponse was similar: the criticscommentedforemoston the estrangement through the dappledpainting style and further more tried to surpass each other in rediscoveringthe characteristics

(24)

oftheir era in the painting. Acertain “Jacques” referred to the paint ingas the most significant in the entireImpressionists’ exhibition of 1877 and describedtheportrayed women as“simple working-class women, goodfolk from thesuburbs... with no ulterior motives.”Ch.

Flor O’Squarr(Oscar CharlesFlor)praisedthesunshine refracted by the foliage and falling onto the little girls’ fair hair, rosy cheeks, and ribbons.The dancing cafe he saw as possibly the last “guinguette” in Paris. His contemporaries knewwhat he meant: a particular kind of cheap tavern. Philippe Burty, however, criticized the lack of solid elementsin the vaporous painting; tohim, the buzz ofthe eventwas not sufficiently grounded in clearlyoutlined chairs,benches, and ta bles. Hemissed aclearanchoringof Renoir’s romantic Impression ism in reality.88

The composition is a large collage ofindividual scenes, heldtogether by its density and the mise-en-scene above the heads of the figures, the orchestra andthe fayade of the building, as well as the rhythm of the gas lamps.In the center, there aretwo women in the foreground, leaning over one of the green benches placed around the dance floor andchattingwith aman sittingon achair and facing backward—a substitute figure for the viewer. The two women, thesistersJeanne and Estelle,akind ofdouble model of the same type of dreamy beauty, translate contemporary fashioninto an aesthetic worldwherein everything seems to consist ofyouth, color, and light.The male figureseen from behind is alsopart of atable at whichtwo friends are sitting,one of themlooking up from what he is writing, the other drawing thoughtfully on his pipe. In1921,Riv

iere—whom the writing figure wearing a straw hat represents—sup

plieduswith the names ofthe models and the artists in the painting:

mostlyNaturalists,but also some who had nothing in common with Impressionism.89 The three men grouped around the table are dis rupted in their absorptionby the women, who are most probably about to askthem for a dance. Not untilnow do we noticethat the bench andthe table do not actually matchperspectively—yet an

otherreason forthe groups to dissolveandgo dancing. One ofthe dancing couples, consistingof the picturesque figureof the Cuban painter Pedro Vidaland the model Margot, is already looking toward the group—orperhapstoward the viewer. Ashe already didin Inn of Mere Antony see fig. 53, Renoirproves himself a masterofgroup compositions in which various centers ofaction and different poles ofattention are assembled in a fascinating way. The closeness of this picture togenre painting,for all that it combines a group portrait witha contemporary scene,has rightly been emphasized.Although weknowthe figures’names thanksto Riviere, they are nonetheless

(25)

From Bohemiato Arcadia

generalized to types—the youthful cast of a modern idyll, aswellas the social category ofthose concerned with concealing their origin throughfashion and manners.90

In 1911, Meier-Graefe emphasizes the “pantheistic . . . animation of the scene.” When he speaks of the unconventional relief-likemodeling of light and color, he has completely endorsed the general tone ofcontemporary criticism. Again, he performsavi- talistic analysis of thecorrespondences between styleand objectof painting. “The brush meets the canvasas the sunmeets the throng dancing beneath the trees.” Light and color determine the rhythm of thiscrowd, into which each individual figure merges. “You have to see into it,” and take part. “To do so requires the kind ofgood will which is needed to entersuch a company of dancers. You haveno choice but to join in,unless youwantto mope in a corner. Alittle jolt is necessary in order to see the world asit is seen here.”9’The social component and the contradictions ofthe atmosphere, however, are overlooked in sucha description.

Perhaps itwasRenoir himselfwhoset things straight. He later insisted to Vollard that he hadspunstrawintogold. He wanted toshowthe lack of inhibition with which young women would mod el forhim. Butin that context he also discussesthe question of the prevalence of prostitution among thefemale clients at the Moulin de la Galette,asif there were a link betweenthe willingness to pose and prostitution. Renoir alsoproves Riviere aliar, for Rivierehadinsisted thatthe painter had organized the tableau entirely“en pleinair.” “As luck would have it, Ifound some girlsat theMoulindela Galette, like the two in the foreground ofmy picture, who askednothing better than to pose. One of them usedto write to me about her appoint

ments on gold-edged note-paper. Iusedto see her deliveringmilk in Montmartre.One day I learned she had alittle apartment which a box-holder at the opera had furnished for her. But her mother had made herpromise that she would not give up herjob.At firstI was afraid that the more or less serious loversof these models whom I had taken from their nest at the Moulin de laGalette would forbid their

‘wives’ to come tothe studio. But they weregood sportstoo; I even got some of them to pose. But you mustn’tthink that these girls gave themselves to anyone who happened along. There was fierce virtue among someof these children of the street.”92Vollard has Renoir talk abouthis attitude towardthepeopleonthe fine line betweenthe petite bourgeoisieandprostitution, between virtue and seduction.

It wasaround the same time that Riviere described the placeas be

ingfrequented by working-class families from Montmartre whose daughterswould dance there, aswell as prostitutes albeitonly to

(26)

MichaelF. Zimmermann

dance.93 Even today, therestill are arthistorians who interpret Re noir’smasterpiece against this background, asanostalgic memento of the repression that thepeople of Paris hadsuffered by the defeat ofthe Commune in the spring of1871.94

A drawing by the artist bringsus closer to the ambiva

lence ofthe setting: he created itin 1877 or 1878as an illustration to Zola’s novel L’Assommoir. Nana—the main characterinwhat may be Zola’s most famous novel—and her friends go

outfor awalk in the street, displaying theiryouth

ful charm fig. 13.The drawing captures the same girl ish bloom that Jeanne and Estelle display, but these

girls do not turn to anunknown youngmanacross the bench in el egiac beauty, but rather with vulgarlyflirtatious gestures to per

plexed workers acrossthe street.95 Here Renoirshows us themilieu his idyllsare actually constructed in.Superficialcourteousness can be deceptive. We do not know whetherhe himself sees the joy

fulcompany in the Ball at the Moulin de laGalettey asanepitomeof happiness, or projects this idea onto his figures and his viewers.

The refracted sunlight that Renoir distributes across the tableau so generously maystandfor the fact that he does not simply car ry us away into a dreamofhappiness. Before the critics found ac cess to the picture, they commentedon the alienating technique.

While the viewer is allowed to share in thedream, heissupposed toreflect on it aswell—as the fulfillment of desiresthat have arisen in an altogethercontradictorymilieu.Beyond picturinganearthly paradise, Renoir always lets us feel the misery, the struggle for sur vival as well—the kind oflife that his scenarios of secular salvation are based upon.

(27)