Pierre-Auguste RENOIR (1841-1919) French

Jeunes filles se coiffant, circa 1885-1890 Signed 'Renoir' (lower right corner) Pastel on paper - Pastel sur papier 77 x 62 cm - 30.3 x 24.4 in. AED 6,612,000 - 7,346,000 Provenance Ambroise Vollard, Paris Freudenberg Family, Nicholasee, Berlin Anon. sale: Sotheby's, London, Impressionist & Modern Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture, Part I, June 28, 1994 Private collection, Europe Exhibited New York, Hammer Galleries, Renoir, Nov. 1, 2010 - Jan. 5, 2011, No. 3, p. 21 Literature Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, Pastels et Dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1918, vol. II, ill. p.108 Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Renoir, Catalogue raisonné de Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins et Aquarelles, 1882 -1994, Editions Bernheim Jeune, Paris, 2009, No. 1392, ill. p. 444 (see Renoir pastel technique in François Daulte, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Watercolours, Pastels and Drawings in colour, London, 1959, pp. 10-13) Public notes Renoir wrote in October 1885 in a letter to Durand Ruel: 'I believe this time you will be happy. I started again my old technique soft and light and I believe I will not leave it again. I had some beautiful young girls and some children as models. It is very soft, coloured clear. I hope to bring you a few before the end of the week...but I am truly inspired to do a series'. The two girls were subjects that Renoir not only liked very much, but they also pleased the public and purchasers. These adolescent creatures were usually depicted in pairs, one of them blonde and dressed in blue and the other dark-haired and dressed in pink (as in the pastel shown). The girls stand like icons before a multicoloured blend amidst sky and earth... 'The slight softening of their features suggests nevertheless that Renoir the painter remains, for all that, Renoir.' 'I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall' Pierre-Auguste Renoir 0 / 0