Pierre Auguste Renoir, Washerwoman and Child, Ca. 1887
Oil on Canvas, The Barnes Collection
This blog is an update to my August 17th blog on the late Renoir exhibition that closed earlier this month at the Philadelphia Museum.
The inventor and art collector Albert C. Barnes of Philadelphia created the Barnes Foundation in 1922; amongst its 2500 objects are 800 paintings of which 181 are works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Barnes's interest in Renoir's works was sparked by his meeting Leo and Gertrude Stein at their famous apartment at 27, Rue de Fleuris in Paris in 1912. This began a 4 decade friendship between Leo Stein and Barnes. Both collectors developed a passion for collecting Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne and Renoir.
There is no doubt that Leo played up his deep admiration for the many late Renoirs he had purchased especially the Washerwoman and Child which hung on the studio wall of the Stein's' apartment. Indeed both Picasso and Braque, guests at the atelier, urged Leo to pay more attention to gallery exhibitions of Renoirs later works with an eye to having him add to his collection.
So, Barnes started buying up Renoirs at a rapid pace, snapping up 27 paintings between 1915-1916.
By 1920, Leo, who had split from his sister Gertrude, was in deep financial trouble; he was forced to sell 16 Renoir paintings to help him move to Italy. In these circumstances, Barnes was able to buy 8 of these paintings directly at cheap prices; shortly thereafter he indirectly acquired another five.
Why was Barnes so keen on buying late Renoirs? Here's a clue from his 1935 book entitled The Art of Renoir:
"...Renoir's career is a superlative example of all the essential characteristics of the process of growth. Nothing is ever included in his mature painting that he has not made genuinely his own, and nothing, once assimilated is lost."
The inventor saw a natural evolutionary growth in Renoir's work that reached it's 'apotheosis' in his later works. Hence his passion for collecting them.
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