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The Daughters of Durand-Ruel
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"Renoir," Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 1892.
"Tableaux de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro et Sisley," Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, April 1899.
"Renoir," Galerie Paul Cassirer, Berlin, Feb. - March 1912.
"Portraits par Renoir," Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, June 5 - 20, 1912.
"Renoir," Galerie Thannhauser, Munich, Germany, Jan. 19 - Feb. 13, 1913.
"Französische Kunst des XIX. und XX. Jahrhunderts," Kunsthaus, Zurich, Oct. 5 - Nov. 14, 1917.
"Renoir," Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, Nov. 29 - Dec. 18, 1920.
"Renoir," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, March 23 - April 29, 1950.
"Masterpieces from Museums and Private Collections," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, Nov. 8 - Dec. 15, 1951.
"Art Treasures Exhibition," Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc. 1955, No. 359.
"Renoir," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, April 8 - May 10, 1958.
"French Paintings 1789-1929 from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Dayton Art Institute, March 25 - May 22, 1960. (Exhib. cat. no. 63).
"The Controversial Century 1850-1950," Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1962.
"Four Masters of Impressionism," Acquavella Galleries, New York, Oct. 24 - Nov. 30, 1968, cat. no. 32.
"The Past Rediscovered: French Painting 1800-1900," Minneapolis Institute of Arts, July 3 - Sept. 7, 1969, cat. no. 72.
"Renoir," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, March 27 - May 3, 1969.
"Faces from the World of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, Nov. 2 - Dec. 9, 1972.
"Paintings by Renoir," Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 3 - April 1, 1973.
"Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, June 12 - Sept. 5, 1977. (Exhib. cat. no. 41).
"Veronese to Franz Kline: Masterworks from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk," for the benefit of The Chrysler Museum Art Reference Library, Wildenstein & Co., New York, N. Y., April 13 - May 13, 1978. (Exhib. cat. no. 24).
"French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum," North Carolina Museum of Art, May 31 - Sept. 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Nov. 6, 1986 - Jan. 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 38).
"Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age," National Gallery of Canada, June 27 - September 14, 1997; The Art Institute of Chicago, October 14, 1997 - January 4, 1998; Kimbell Art Museum, February 8 - April 26, 1998. (Exhib. cat. no. 44).
"In the Open Air: Impressionism and Its Influences," Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, March 25 - June 5, 2005.
"Upstairs/Downstairs: Masterpieces from the Chrylser Collection," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 10 - December 30, 2012.
"Masterworks from the Chrysler Museum," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, April 9, 2013 - February 2, 2014.
"Paul Durand-Ruel," Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, France, October 15, 2014 - February 8, 2015; National Gallery, London, England, March 4 - May 31, 2015; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, June 18 - September 13, 2015.
"Renoir: Rococo Revival," Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, March 2 – June 19, 2022.
French, 1841–1919
The Daughters of Durand-Ruel, 1882
Oil on canvas
Dozens of colors come together to evoke the dazzling effect of sunlight on these girls’ white dresses. Despite the quick brushstrokes, Pierre-Auguste Renoir did not sacrifice details for effect. He carefully rendered the laces of the girls’ boots, the younger sitter’s black ribbon necklace, and even the flower on the brim of the straw bonnet. An Impressionist masterpiece, the double portrait depicts the daughters of Paul Durand-Ruel—a Parisian art dealer who championed the work of artists like Renoir.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in memory of Thelma Chrysler Foy 71.518
French, 1841-1919
The Daughters of Durand-Ruel, 1882
Oil on canvas, 32" x 25¾" (81.3 x 65.4 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: _Renoir. 82_
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in Memory of Thelma Chrysler Foy, 71.518
References: François Daulte, _Renoir_, New York, 1973, p. 78; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 38.
In 1833 Jean-Marie-Fortuné Durand and his wife Marie (née Ruel) expanded their Paris stationer's shop to include a commercial art gallery. This establishment, the Galerie Durand-Ruel, became one of Europe's most prestigious art houses, playing a major role in the promotion and eventual public acceptance of avant-garde painting in late-nineteenth-century France.
The gallery's spectacular rise can be credited largely to Fortuné and Marie's son Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1921), who joined the family firm in 1851 and became its guiding force after 1865. Paul Durand-Ruel initially used the gallery to promote the work of such mid-century painters as Delacroix, Corot and the Barbizon masters. But encounters in London in 1871 with Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro redirected his interests toward a more radical group of younger French painters, the Impressionists. Returning to Paris, the dealer rapidly established himself as the city's most enthusiastic promoter of the Impressionist group - Monet, Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre Auguste Renoir - and he remained the group's most faithful commercial supporter during its early decades of struggle. In 1888 he opened a gallery in New York, attracting a new clientele of wealthy American collectors (see no. 118). "Without him," Renoir reportedly said, 'we would not have survived."
Durand-Ruel met Renoir in Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian War and purchased his first pictures from him in 1872. Within a decade the dealer was buying Renoir's paintings regularly and in quantity, and the two had become close colleagues. Thus, in 1882, when Durand-Ruel asked the artist to paint his children, Renoir readily obliged. He did a portrait of Durand-Ruel's eldest son Joseph and a double portrait of younger sons Charles and Georges, both of which are in the Durand-Ruel collection in Paris. Renoir also produced The Chrysler Museum painting, an enchanting double portrait of Durand-Ruel's two daughters, Marie-Thérèse, then fourteen, and the twelve-year-old Jeanne.
Dressed in light summer frocks and Milan straw hats (Jeanne's rests beside her), the sister pose on a garden bench, smiling amid the coolness and dappled light of their tree-shaded perch. Executed entirely out-of-doors, the picture retains the vibrant "rainbow palette" and vigorous open brushwork - the broad scatter of gay color touches - of Renoir's "pure" Impressionist paintings of the later 1870s.
Jefferson C. Harrison. _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991, 142-143, no. 113.