Édouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the Courtauld (which is your favourite?)

This post is a few impressionist paintings from my recent visit to the Courtauld.

✲✲✲

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet - 1882

This was Manet’s last masterpiece.

Manet was never fully appreciated by the public. He submitted this to the Paris Salon of 1882 to negative reception. Critics just didn’t get it, they found it unsettling. He became disillusioned and ill. In April 1883, he died two weeks, after a leg amputated below the knee, due to syphilitic infection. Monet and Zola would help carry his coffin. 

And what a great painting - a complex composition involving a mirror (and, therefore, undoubtedly postulating something about the Parisian 19th century “reality”), and executed quite beautifully. Alluring.

What is fascinating is the expression on the barmaid’s face as she leans onto the bar itself.

Is she trying to recall something, or just feeling a bit tired?

Her energy certainly feels discordant with the overall tone and energy of the surrounding.

One of my favourite little bits of details is the feet of the trapeze artist at the top left.

Such radiant and sumptuous tangerines. They glisten in their bowel.

And the champagne bottles! Manet signs his name on the cover.

According to the gallery:

In this work, Manet created a complex and absorbing composition that is considered one of the iconic paintings of modern life.

✲✲✲

Study for “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (Luncheon on the Grass) by Manet - 1863

This was a preparatory work for the masterpiece at the Musée d’Orsay.

It’s very interesting and makes you think.

This painting’s subject was considered shocking and scandalous in its depiction of the “everyday” and unidealised with the inversion of Renaissance traditions of the female figure.

As above, Manet draws inspiration from the contemporary and everyday ordinary people — in opposition to the academy.

 

 A nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men.

They don’t even seem to notice her; and she confronts the viewer with her direct gaze.

I think the lady in the background is a nod to Titian’s “Reclining Venus”.

Turban is part Medieval European Fashion. 

The chaperon/turban (along with the cape) a nod to Renaissance clothing - Jan van Eyck?

✲✲✲

Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil by Manet - 1874

So vivid and beautiful.

Apparently, Manet painted this while staying with Claude Monet over a summer break. Claude Monet’s wife and son are posing along the embankment.

Swift brushstrokes creating amazing ripples on the water surface.

✲✲✲

Spring at Chatou by Renoir - 1873

Archetypal impressionism.

Just beautiful and idyllic.

The impressionist use of colour and light can convey a summery feeling. The loose brushwork gives the sense of a breeze swaying tall grass.

Amazing.

✲✲✲

Outskirts of Pont-Aven by Renoir - 1888

Really drawn to this. It’s striking & quite beautiful.

It’s a bit of a departure from his earlier impressionism.

Vigorous and compelling use of colour also adds to the sense of a summery breeze rifling through the grass.

The contours of the landscape and house delineated through the masterful use of colours.

✲✲✲

Woman Tying her Shoe by Renoir - 1918

Like it a lot.

One of Renoir’s last paintings before his death in 1919.

Sometimes the most beautiful thing in life can be simple things — such as a lovely lady tying her shoes. I think Renoir has the gift of celebrating the simple beauties of life which we all have a habit of overlooking (e.g. a relaxing afternoon, the joys of warm and soft hues). The simple joys of life should be celebrated. 

One of his saying which I quite liked:

“There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.”

It’s clear his disconnect with Impressionism of the 1880s (as seen in “Pont-Aven” above) has becoming enduring. 

The use of such warm, soft and opulent colours alongside broad brushstrokes make for such a lovely painting.