Footnotes

This work will be included in the forthcoming Pierre-Auguste Renoir Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.

Provenance
The artist's estate.
Galerie Barbazanges, Paris, no. 2688 (acquired from the above in 1922, until 1928).
Aline Barnsdall Collection, Santa Barbara.
David Barry Devine Collection, San Francisco (by descent from the above, circa 1946).
Knoedler & Co., New York, no. A4867/CA4121 (acquired from the above in March 1952).
Dorothy Dear Metzger Hutton Collection, Old Westbury (acquired from the above on 10 January 1953); her sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 1 July 1964, lot 27.
Derek Coombs Collection, London (acquired at the above sale).
Private collection, London & Zug (by descent from the above).

Literature
J. & G. Bernheim-Jeune, L'Atelier de Renoir, San Francisco, 1989, no. 78 (illustrated pl. 29).
G-P. & M. Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, Vol. II, 1882-1894, Paris, 2009, no. 963 bis (illustrated p. 168).


In 1893, when Esquisse de cinq personnages dans un paysage was painted, Pierre-Auguste Renoir found himself at a decisive moment in his career. Almost thirty years after his debut at the Salon of 1864, and more than twenty-five years after participating in the founding exhibition of Impressionism, the artist entered a transitional phase that would define the rest of his career and style.

In his early fifties, Renoir was by now a consecrated artist and a major figure in the French cultural landscape. In fact, the present work was painted just after a particularly important year for Renoir: his loyal dealer Paul Durand-Ruel dedicated a major retrospective to the artist which drew acclaim from critics and the public alike, with the Musée du Luxembourg then acquiring Jeunes filles au piano (1892), a painting Renoir himself regarded as one of his greatest achievements. Esquisse de cinq personnages dans un paysage was therefore painted at a time marked by recognition from the market and the public, crowned with institutional acknowledgement.

Perhaps as a result of this now firmly established recognition, Renoir's style undertook a decisive shift during this period. After a decade marked by what critics termed his Ingresque period – during which Renoir sought to discipline his practice with clear outlines, enamel-like surfaces and very controlled brushwork, reminiscent of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's (1780–1867) classical rigour – the 1890s witnessed a change. Renoir's handling of pigment became freer, more supple and more liberated. Colour once again regained primacy.

The present work illustrates this synthesis and renewal and heralds the style Renoir would retain until his death in 1919. It depicts five figures gathered in a woodland clearing: two men sit prominently in the foreground, one wearing a hat, while three women, clothed in light dresses, are engaged in a discussion with them. The figures are placed within a sunlit forest glade, where patches of sky and foliage intermingle, giving the impression of an intimate gathering nestled in nature. The painting shimmers with fluid brushstrokes that dissolve figures and foliage alike into a luminous haze of colour. Light is broken into flickering touches of green, rose and ochre, sculpting forms not through line but through vibration and atmosphere.

A perfect example of Renoir's masterful handling of colour and oils, the present work is a beautiful demonstration of paint handled like pastel, with a soft texture enabling subtle modulations. Fully emancipated from the Ingresque period, the artist used his brush to dissolve line, blur contours and model volumes as though sculpting in coloured media. As explained by John Rewald, for Renoir, line was no longer a boundary separating objects from their surroundings, but rather a means of uniting them (J. Rewald, Renoir Drawings, New York, 1946, p. 14). This work testifies to Renoir's mastery of modelling: a magician of colour, he sculpted figures in light and conferred on them an immediate vitality.

One cannot admire Esquisse de cinq personnages dans un paysage without recalling Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863). Manet's canvas had caused a scandal at the Salon des Refusés by juxtaposing contemporary bourgeois men with a nude woman, presented without the veil of idealisation. The painting quickly assumed an enduring notoriety, and its subject was subsequently revisited by numerous artists, among them Monet, Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso.

However, where Manet had caused a rupture through raw realism and provocative modernity, Renoir preferred an idealised pastoral idyll. His picnic is devoid of scandal: the women are clothed, their gestures natural, with the entire scene bathed in light and harmony. Where Manet staged a tension between tradition and modernity, Renoir emphasised continuity and joyful celebration. Yet the allusion to Manet's work is unmistakable, particularly in the two male figures of the present composition. They adopt poses reminiscent of the men in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe – albeit repositioned – one even distinguished by the same type of hat, all set within a secluded woodland glade.

Nevertheless, the source of Renoir's inspiration extended further back into the eighteenth century. In fact, he repeatedly acknowledged Watteau and Fragonard as key influences from the late 1880s and confessed to the dealer René Gimpel: 'I am an eighteenth-century painter. I modestly consider that my art descends not only from Watteau, Fragonard, and Hubert Robert, but also that I am one of them' (R. Gimpel, Journal d'un collectionneur marchand de tableaux, Paris, 1963, p. 34).

The theme of the picnic can be traced back to the Renaissance, gaining new currency in the early eighteenth century with the rediscovery of works such as Titian's Concert champêtre (circa 1509). The subject found renewed vitality in eighteenth-century France in the guise of the fêtes galantes. This genre, often painted on a small scale, depicted elegantly dressed groups of men and women in parks, engaged in amorous play echoed by an idealised natural setting – epitomised by works such as Watteau's La Collation (circa 1721).

The influence of these painters on Renoir extended beyond subject matter to his very manner of painting. As he explained to Paul Durand-Ruel: 'I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch. It's nothing new, but rather a follow-up to the paintings of the eighteenth century. This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting (like Fragonard, but not so good). Those fellows who give the impression of not painting nature, knew more about it than we do' (Renoir quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121). Contemporary critics recognised this lineage as well: Gustave Geffroy wrote in 1892 that 'Renoir has a very solid anchor in the art of our [French] eighteenth century; he continues this lucid and blossoming tradition' (G. Geoffroy, 'Auguste Renoir', in Le Journal des arts, 20 June 1896, p. 36). The present work thus fully belongs to this moment, when Renoir openly embraced dialogue with past masters while renewing their legacy through the prism of Impressionism.

This retrospective gaze was not limited to the eighteenth century. Since his Italian journey in 1881, Renoir had been deeply marked by the grandeur of classical antiquity and by the dream of a golden age. He admired above all the ancient Greeks: 'What admirable beings the Greeks were... Their existence was so happy that they imagined that the gods came all the way down to earth to find their paradise and to love. Yes, the earth was the gods' paradise. That is what I want to paint' (Renoir quoted in J. Gasquet, 'Les Paradis de Renoir', in L'amour de l'art, February 1921, p. 41). This aspiration guided his work in the 1890s: the recreation of a timeless earthly paradise where love and beauty triumph over industrial and urban modernity. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he refused to inscribe contemporary reality or social upheaval in his canvases. Instead, Renoir painted the sweetness of an afternoon in the woods, sunlight flickering through branches, heightened by vibrant touches of colour.

Esquisse de cinq personnages dans un paysage remained in Renoir's studio until his death in 1919. By that time, the studio contained nearly 800 works which his three sons sold. The Galerie Barbazanges, based on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, acquired a significant part of this ensemble between 1922 and 1927, including the present work in 1922. Following in the footsteps of Durand-Ruel, who played an important role in introducing Impressionism to the United States, Barbazanges was also instrumental in expanding Renoir's reach among American collectors. Active in the 1920s, the gallery sold several works to Albert C. Barnes, founder of the Barnes Foundation. Among them were two paintings of the same theme, painted around the same year and still kept at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia today. The work subsequently entered the illustrious collection of Aline Barnsdall, oil heiress and enlightened patron, who assembled major works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin, Braque, Picasso – and Renoir.

Some have referred to Renoir as a 'painter of happiness' (G. Néret, Renoir, Peintre du bonheur, 1841-1919, Cologne, 2001), and the present work exemplifies the artist's striving to capture harmony and translate into paint his Arcadian vision of the world. This idyllic outlook would later find an echo in the cinematic work of his son, Jean Renoir. In his film Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1959) – shot at Les Collettes, the setting for many of Renoir's landscapes – Jean transposed his father's pictorial aesthetic onto the screen. The plot, which contrasts a scientist devoted to artificial insemination with the spontaneity of pastoral love, encapsulates the very tension that Pierre-Auguste Renoir had resolved in his painting: the triumph of nature, sensuality and light over the pretensions of modern science. The film's imagery, with its shimmering foliage and scintillating greens, directly recalls his father's Impressionist compositions.

As a whole, Esquisse de cinq personnages dans un paysage presents a timeless earthly paradise, distilling Renoir's principal concerns at the threshold of the 1890s. Accompanied by excellent private provenance and complemented by related compositions in important collections and institutions, it constitutes a rare work of art history, bridging references to both modern and old masters. Most importantly, through its vibrant light and carefree figures, it embodies what Renoir contributed to modern painting: a celebration of the joie de vivre, simple beauty, and light itself – his most enduring legacy.