Renoir dessinateur

The journey spans from sketches of the 1860s to monumental red chalk drawings of the 1910s and reveals a Renoir often little known: as much draftsman as painter. On these sheets, quick studies, silky pastels, luminous watercolors, pencil notes, and vibrant red chalks show the hesitations, corrections and intuitions that nourished his great paintings. The exhibition places drawing at the heart of his creative process: watercolor appears as an immediate notation of color, red chalk combined with white chalk redefines the female nude, and late compositions reveal freedom of line, shifting from one medium to another. Organized into thematic sections (from academic beginnings to the monumental sheets of the final period), the display also allows glimpses of the artist’s intimate life: family portraits, studies of domestic scenes, and pictures inspired by those around him in Essoyes—his son Jean, his nurse Gabrielle Renard, his wife Aline—take on new presence here. Installed in the Amont gallery, the exhibition offers a chronological and sensuous reading of Renoir’s gesture, making tangible his inquiries into form and color. For those who love tracing the genesis of a painting or understanding how a master combines line and color, "Renoir the Draftsman" is a convincing and delicate immersion into the painter’s studio, a rare opportunity to see side by side the notebooks and sheets that shaped his art.

Among the assembled sheets, the influence of this laborious training is evident: precise lines, study of modeling, and mastery of tonal values that shaped young Renoir's hand. These studio pieces sit alongside commissioned or published drawings, including illustrations he made for the press of his time, all proof of his direct engagement with Parisian life and its scenes. Surprising perhaps, but consistent with the sources presented in the exhibition: during the great Impressionist period, Renoir drew little, favoring painting en plein air and the immediate capture of color and light on canvas, without lengthy preparatory studies. This contrast—the academic rigor of his beginnings and the immediacy of his notes of modern life—is emphasized in the scenography. For the visitor, these pages offer a rare privilege: indirectly reading an artist's trajectory, from copying exercises at the Louvre to animated sketches depicting Paris. They invite following, sheet by sheet, the formation of a gaze that was never indifferent to either the craft or the world.

When red chalk and white chalk redefine the female nude Around 1883, Renoir underwent a deep crisis. After the triumph of "Luncheon of the Boating Party," he felt the need to solidify forms and return to mastery of the line. Raphael and Ingres became his models. The female nude, previously secondary in his work, was raised to an indispensable art form. The artist embarked on a large composition of female bathing scenes inspired by "The Bath of the Nymphs," a relief by sculptor Girardon at Versailles. He multiplied preparatory sheets in the studio and produced about twenty drawings for this single work. Red chalk held a privileged place for its suppleness, flesh tone, and kinship with 18th-century masters such as Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard. Preparatory drawings for the composition of the Bathers Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), "Three Bathers" (study for "Bathers. Decorative Painting Essay"), circa 1886, red chalk and black chalk with white chalk highlights on paper mounted on canvas, 108 x 162 cm, Paris, Musée d'Orsay, RF 29660 This monumental "three chalks" drawing is one of the most revealing documents of Renoir’s creative process in the mid-1880s. It is an intermediate state of the composition "Bathers. Decorative Painting Essay," marked by many visible corrections and revisions on the sheet. During his "Ingresque crisis," the artist multiplied preparatory studies in the studio, about twenty in total for this work alone, breaking radically with his Impressionist direct painting method. The red chalk, combined with black chalk and white highlights, allowed him to obtain warm modeling evoking flesh, in the lineage of the 18th-century masters he admired. This sheet is also a major commercial milestone: sold for over 7,000 francs to dealer Georges Petit in 1903, then 10,000 francs to the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in 1910. "Bathers. Decorative Painting Essay," presented at the International Exhibition at Georges Petit’s in 1887, surprised by its linear aspect and light tones. This graphic turn moved Renoir away from the Impressionist touch toward a strong line structuring the composition.

Black pencil, sanguine, and pastel respond to and overlap each other with unprecedented freedom: on generous formats, the gesture soars, envelops volumes, and projects silhouettes beyond the support. These large sheets, including the monumental sanguines from the 1910s, reveal an artist who transforms drawing into a true field of experimentation, no longer just a step toward the canvas, but a work in its own right. The exhibition highlights a domestic and emotional intimacy: his son Jean, the nurse Gabrielle Renard, and his wife Aline occupy these compositions where women at their toilette or young girls absorbed in music take on an almost sculptural presence. Seeing these pieces in situ allows one to appreciate the warmth of the line, the richness of the light effects rendered by chalk and sanguine, and how Renoir, in his final decades, expands drawing to make its form radiate. These monumental sheets conclude the exhibition with a sense of presence—a Renoir who, even in the apparent simplicity of drawing, seeks to give the body and everyday life a new intensity. Admiring them up close, in the measured light of the rooms, is an experience that reveals in a fresh way the modernity and tenderness of the painter’s gaze.