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Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
| Title: |
Portrait of Richard Wagner |
| Medium: |
Original lithograph, in black and white, on Arches paper, circa 1900, unsigned |
| Image Size: |
435 x 320 mms (image) ; 651 x 500 mms (sheet) |
| Reference: |
Melot R.33, Delteil 33 |
| Condition: |
good |
| Price: |
Price On Application
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In 1882 Renoir met Wagner in Pallego, Sicily, through his friend Lascou, a magistrate who was a
great admirer of the composer. At the time Wagner was not admired by the French people but initially he seemed to get on with the artist. The composer agreed to sit for Renoir, but limited the time to 25 minutes, during which Renoir completed a portrait and a few sketches. Wagner's anti-French and anti-Semetic comments during the brief sitting annoyed the artist . But Renoir was more annoyed by the nasty comments Wagner made about Offenbach, a composer much admired by the artist. Some time afterwards, Renoir watched a performance of "Die Walkure" at Bayreuth and found the length of the opera and the completely darkened theatre very unpleasant . He wrote to a friend "You are forced to look at the only place where there's any light: the stage. It's absolute tyranny. I might want to look at a pretty woman sitting in a box. We might as well be frank about it: Wagner's music is boring." Two paintings resulted from this meeting (one in the Bibliotheque de L’Opera, the other in the Alfred Cortot collection), also a number of drawings. This litho- graph was made about 12 years later. The piece was published by Ambroise Vollard the famous publisher whose career lasted until the 1930’s and culminated in the well known Vollard Suite by Pablo Picasso.
Edition: 100 impressions on heavy Arches and several on Japan.
Printed by: Auguste Clot, Paris
Published by: Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Public Collections:Bibliotheque National , Paris ; Art Institute of Chicago ; Boston Public Library ;
National Library of Art, Washington, DC.
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