Pierre-Auguste Renoir & Richard Guino sculpture for sale / sculpture a vendre - Danseuse au voile
Pierre-Auguste Renoir & Richard Guino sculpture for sale / sculpture a vendre - Danseuse au voile
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 (Limoges 1841-1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)

“Danseuse au voile”

Circa 1913, cast from 1964

Bronze: 64 cm, height

Signed “Renoir” incised on the plinth, numbered “13/20”,

marked “RENOIR 1964” and with the copyright mark.

Cast by Richard Guino. With foundry stamp “Cire perdue Valsuani”

Notes

The bronze “La danseuse au voile” refers to the painting “The Judgement of Paris”. In 1913, Pierre-Auguste Renoir created a second version of his original 1908 painting. In the same year, he began working on sculptures in Essoyes with the young sculptor Richard Guino. Guino, who had previously worked with Aristide Maillol, helped the master with his new technique. Fourteen sculptures date from the period of collaboration between Renoir and Guino. Half of them are related to the female figures in the painting.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is one of the most famous French artists who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. He evolved a technique of broken brushstrokes and used bold combinations of pure complementary colours, to capture the light and movement of his landscapes and figure subjects.

Renoir was celebrated in the early twentieth century as one of the greatest modern French painters, not only for his work as an Impressionist but also for the uncompromising aesthetic of his late works.

After moving to Les Collettes in the south of France in 1909, and in spite of almost insurmountable physical frailties (he was 68 years of age now), Renoir actively continued to experiment with form. Encouraged by his art dealer and friend Ambroise Vollard, Renoir turned to sculpture, first making small medallions before later conceiving larger works with the aid of assistants. His figures took on the proportions of a Greco-Roman Venus, with narrow shoulders and swelling hips. The monumentality that he had long sought to achieve in paint had now transformed into three dimensions.

Between 1913 and 1918 Renoir employed the Catalan artist Richard Guino, who had previously worked for Aristide Maillol, and the two embarked on Renoir’s first large-scale bronze, Venus Victorious, which Vollard commissioned. Guino studied at fine art schools in Catalonia before moving to Paris at age twenty, meeting Renoir three years later. While the young sculptor had a distinct point of view, assisting Renoir required him to suppress his independent stylistic impulses. In the case of Venus Victorious, Renoir first made a clay statuette, which Guino turned into a wax model under Renoir’s supervision, and finally a Parisian foundry cast the model in bronze. After their collaboration ended in 1918, Guino exhibited his original works and attempted to break free of associations with Renoir; he eventually reversed course, however, fighting for acknowledgement as Renoir’s sculptural “coauthor.” When Renoir died in 1919, the sculptures were publicised and exploited as his alone by Vollard then by Renoir.

The “enigma of the Renoir sculpture” was not solved until sixty years after its creation, at the end of a long action initiated in 1965 by Michel Guino, son of Richard Guino and himself a sculptor, who laboured to divulge his father’s sculpture. After a close analysis of the pieces, of the processes which directed their creation and after the hearing of numerous artists, Richard Guino was recognized co-author in 1971 by the Third Civil Court of the Tribunal de Paris and the issue was settled by the Supreme Court of Appeal in 1973. The art historian Paul Haesaerts specified as early as 1947 in his book Renoir sculptor (Ed. Hermes, Bruxelles): “Guino was never an actor merely reading his text or a musician interpreting mechanically his score. The latter content themselves with being performers, in no way do they participate in the creative process. Guino was involved body and soul in the creative act. We can even affirm that if he hadn’t been there, the sculpture of Renoir would have never seen the light. Guino was indispensable.”

The action was not entered against Renoir, a twist which was conveyed in numerous texts and newspaper articles referring to the case. The goal of the lawsuit was to unveil the exceptional account of this process of creation and to bring to light the original contribution of Guino to the sculptured work, initially obscured by Vollard.

Catalogue Raisonné

Claude et Paul Renoir/Michel Guino/M.G. Roy, Pierre-Auguste Renoir et Richard Guino – sculptures et dessins, Nice 1974, p. 18f. (other cast)

Provenance

  • Galerie Kornfeld & Klipstein, Bern.
  • Gallery Willi Raeber, Basel, inv. no. 67530, 1967
  • Private collection Switzerland
  • Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland
  • Private collection, The Netherlands

Choose your language