“The Braid”
Today, we have a painting from the great Renoir. Believe it or not, he was in the middle of an artistic crisis when he painted this piece.
“The Braid” is a lovely oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, from circa 1886 to 1887. The model used in this piece was the impressionist muse, Suzanne Valadon.
In this painting, a young woman is braiding her hair. She looks demurely down to the side. Her pale skin and rosy cheeks contrast with the auburn brown of her hair. She is wearing a black bodice with white lace, like a romanticized peasant girl. Green foliage covers the background of the top third of the canvas, silhouetting her hair. The lower two-thirds of the canvas show swaths of red and green colors, with the soft blurred directional lines contrasting against the almost photorealism of the figure.
Although he is known for his impressionism of the 1870s, Renoir had a minor crisis after achieving fame. Later in his life, he wrote to the art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, “A sort of break came in my work about 1883. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and I finally came to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor draw”. Between 1881 and 1882, in an attempt to refocus his art and reinspire his work, Renoir took a trip to Algeria, Spain, and Italy, visiting the major art centers of Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples among other places. He was inspired by seeing the work of the Renaissance masters, particularly Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael with their rich colors, and the figurative work of Diego Velazquez.
After returning to France, Renoir’s art changed to a more naturalistic and classical style, known today as his “dry” or “Ingres period”. This period is named after the French Neoclassical artist, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, in which he found his favorite subject, the female nude. Renoir abandoned landscapes and working en plein air to spend more time in the studio on paintings of the female body. Renoir’s art shifted from the loose impressionism brush strokes and a lighter color palette to more solid lines and vivid colors. During this time, he outlined his figures with bold lines and spent more time on composition and form rather than color. Though this period of his work was not liked by all, including Edgar Degas, it was much loved by Berthe Morisot. By 1890, he had returned to painting in the Impressionism style with a lighter palette with soft brushworks and blurred lines.
Suzanne Valadon’s real name was Marie-Clémentine Valadon. She was given the nickname, Suzanne, by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, after the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Bible’s ‘Book of Daniel’. Although she was lighter haired and blue-eyed, Renoir depicts her in darker tones, giving the appearance of an Italian peasant girl.
Valadon worked as a model for many artists of Paris at this time, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, in addition to others. She was a model and lover of Renoir for a brief period, where he featured her in many of his pieces, including “The Large Bathers”, “Dance at Bougival”, and “The Braid” featured here. Valadon eventually became an established artist herself. In 1894, Valadon became the first female artist ever to be admitted into the exhibitions of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. By 1896, although receiving no formal training, Valadon was making enough money from her art that she was able to become a full-time artist.
“The Braid” is currently in the collections of the Museum Langmatt in Baden, Switzerland.
For more on Pierre-Auguste Renoir, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
