Gagosian Hong Kong presents Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Gagosian announces an exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings. The exhibition comprises Impressionist landscapes and female figure paintings spanning his career, which spanned from the 1870s to the 1910s.

Renoir, as a founder and key figure in Impressionism, was instrumental in the group’s transition from studio-based traditionalism to an art focusing on daily life in and around Paris. The Impressionists reproduced their sensory experience in the open air, depicting transitory effects of light through fragmented brushstrokes of rich color. Bords de Seine à Argenteuil (c. 1881-82) depicts one of the Impressionists’ favorite locations in a nearby town. Two elegantly dressed women on the Seine’s banks are incorporated within a dynamic composition of boats, bridge, clouds, and water. The artist’s travels to Algiers inspired Le Jardin d’essai à Alger (1881). It features palm fronds, vivid sunlight, and dappled shadows in an allée inhabited by promenading persons, representing the city’s botanical garden.

Renoir’s favorite subject was women throughout his career, from his Impressionist portrayals of stylish Parisiennes to his latter figures in home and natural settings. Renoir modified his method to one inspired by the old masters, particularly Raphael and Rubens, beginning in the 1880s, incorporating linear accuracy, smooth modeling, and more organized compositions to his paintings of the feminine form. For the rest of his career, he worked on reconciling this classical approach to the figure with Impressionism’s bright palette and fluid brushwork, creating a new manner of figuration distinguished by its sensuality and inventive modern palette.

Femme assise (about 1879) exemplifies Renoir’s proficiency with pastels, with its dynamic strokes outlining the subject’s emergence from the picture plane. Portrait de fillette sur fond bleu (about 1890) contrasts between the smooth modeling of the young sitter’s head, the subtle gradations of her red hair, and the loose brushwork in whites, blues, and pinks that portrays her dress’s folds. The woman featured in Femme au collier de perles (c. 1900) has a brilliant palette and attire that evokes the bravura style and chromatic experimentation of Rococo artists like as François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Jeune femme en costume oriental devant une table à thé (1909-10) depicts a young woman in a domestic environment, with the artist’s gentle brushwork and luminous palette emphasizing the scene’s peacefulness. She poses with a gilded table prepared for tea, the roses in her hair bouncing off the warm tones that define her body, at ease in her dishabille. Nu s’essuyant (1912), an intimate representation of a female bather in an imagined arcadian environment, is an extraordinary example of Renoir’s late nudes. The naked figure emerges from a background flooded with light and graceful curves, producing a sense of harmony and bucolic beauty, painted with soft yet boldly defined brushwork.