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Lise with a Parasol (French: Lise – La femme à l'ombrelle) is an oil on canvas painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1867 during his early Salon period. The full-length painting depicts model Lise Tréhot posing in a forest. She wears a white muslin dress and holds a black lace parasol to shade her from the sunlight, which filters down through the leaves, contrasting her face in the shadow and her body in the light, highlighting her dress rather than her face. After having several paintings rejected by the Salon, Renoir's Lise with a Parasol was finally accepted and exhibited in May 1868.

Lise with a Parasol
Artist	Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Year	1867
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	184 cm × 115 cm (72 in × 45 in)
Location	Museum Folkwang

The painting was one of Renoir's first critically successful works. At this time, Renoir's technique was still influenced by Gustave Courbet, but he continued to develop his unique style painting filtered light which he would return to in The Swing (1876) and Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876). The almost life-size portrait and unusual contrast in Lise with a Parasol led several critics to ridicule the work. Théodore Duret, a passionate supporter of the nascent Impressionists, bought the painting from Renoir, who was unable to sell it. Karl Ernst Osthaus, a German patron of avant-garde art, acquired Lise with a Parasol in 1901 for the Museum Folkwang.

Background

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) grew up in Paris. His father worked as a tailor and his mother as a seamstress.[1] Renoir trained as a porcelain painter but the Industrial Revolution replaced porcelain painters with machines.[note 1][3] He found work as a decorative commercial artist during the day while learning to draw in the evenings. In the early 1860s, he spent his free time studying paintings at the Louvre and worked in the studio under Charles Gleyre, spending two years at the École des Beaux-Arts. Renoir began submitting his work to the Salon in 1863.[4] His first submission, Nymph and Faun, was rejected, leading Renoir to destroy his painting. The next year, Renoir tried again, submitting La Esméralda to the Salon of 1864.[note 2] Despite its acceptance, Renoir once again destroyed his painting. Two of Renoir's works, Portrait of William Sisley (1864) and Summer Evening[note 3] were accepted by the Salon of 1865.[6][7][8]

In the mid 1860s, Renoir met Lise Tréhot through his friend, artist Jules Le Coeur, who was intimate with Clémence, Lise's sister. From around 1865 to 1872, Lise modeled for Renoir and was his companion during his early Salon period. Meanwhile, Renoir continued to face rejection at the Salon with Paysage avec deux figures (1866) and Diana (1867), two works featuring Lise as a model. Renoir's innovative work as an Impressionist brought great ridicule and poverty, as he was unable to sell his paintings. He survived by devoting himself to painting portraits for wealthy patrons. It would take almost another forty years for the Salon and the wider art community to recognize and acknowledge his contributions to modern art.[9]

Development and exhibition

Renoir was 26 years old when he began painting Lise with a Parasol in the summer of 1867, possibly in August. It is unclear if the painting was made in the Fontainebleau forest, close to Chailly-en-Brie near Bourron-Marlotte or in Chantilly.[note 4][11] Further, it is unknown if the painting was completed in the studio or en plein air.[note 5] Renoir's friend, Edmond Maître, sent a message to Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) about Renoir's technique during that summer, writing that Renoir was "painting strange canvases, having traded turpentine for an infamous sulfate and using, instead of a knife, the little syringe that you know."[12]

Lise with a Parasol was accepted by the Salon of 1868, and it was critically successful, but according to art historian Gary Tinterow, "the jury had stigmatized Renoir as a rebel, along with Courbet, Manet, and Monet."[13] During the exhibition at the Salon, Lise with a Parasol, along with paintings by Bazille and Monet, were moved to a remote gallery known as the "rubbish dump" (dépotoir).[14] When Renoir's work was exhibited by the Salon early in his career, it was often skied,[7] a process where his paintings were deliberately hung in areas such as high places and corners where it was difficult for the public to view and would receive the least attention.[15]

Description

Lise with a Parasol is a full-length, almost life-size portrait of a young woman, standing in a forest clearing. She wears a small, pork pie straw hat with red ribbons, and a long white muslin dress with a long black sash; the dress is modestly buttoned to the neck and has long sheer sleeves. Lise carries a black lace parasol to shade her head while her body is in strong sunlight, standing on a patch of grass.[1][4] The initials of "A" (Auguste) and "L" (Lise) are marked as an arborglyph on the trunk of the tree in the shade behind her.[16]

Art historian John House notes that the work "explore[s] the borderlines between portraiture and genre painting".[4] Renoir's decision to name the painting using only the first name of his model indicates, according to House, that this is not a traditional portrait painting, as such works typically used family names or initials. By using Lise's first name as the title, House argues that Renoir was pointing to her status as a mistress (or an unmarried female lover and companion).[4]

Critical reception

In the late 1860s, Renoir was still in the process of developing his own unique style and technique. Critics noted that Lise with a Parasol, like several of Renoir's earlier paintings, Le Cabaret de la mère Antony à Bourron-Marlotte (1866) and Diana (1867), showed the influence of other artists, notably French Realist painter Gustave Courbet.[17] Art critic Zacharie Astruc, who was also Renoir's friend, described Lise with a Parasol as the "likeable Parisian girl in the woods".[18] Astruc and Émile Zola viewed Renoir's Lise with a Parasol as a continuation of Claude Monet's Camille (1866),[11] with Astruc seeing Lise with a Parasol as part of a "trinity", beginning with Édouard Manet's 1863 painting Olympia (followed by Camille and Lise with a Parasol).[11]

There was no major opposition to Lise with a Parasol at the Salon.[19][15] Art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger praised the work.[20] Tinterow attributes criticism of the painting to Renoir's decision to shadow Tréhot's face in darkness and emphasize the reflection of sunlight from her white dress instead. Several critics noticed this unusual contrast and ridiculed Tréhot's appearance.[11] In Le Salon Pour Rire, French caricaturist André Gill likened Tréhot in Lise with a Parasol to "a nice semisoft cheese out for a stroll",[21] while Ferdinand de Lasteyrie described the painting as "the figure of a fat woman daubed with white".[22]

Provenance

In a letter from Renoir to Frédéric Bazille in September 1869, Renoir writes about his desperation for money: "I exhibited [the portraits of] Lise and Sisley at Carpentier's. I am going to try to stick him for about 100 francs, and I'm going to put my woman in white up for auction. I'll sell it for whatever price it goes for; it's all the same to me."[23][24] Renoir was unable to sell the painting until Théodore Duret, "one of the earliest and most ardent defenders" of the Impressionists,[25] offered him 1,200 francs for the work in 1873.[26] Duret sold the painting to Paul Durand-Ruel in Paris on June 5, 1890; German art dealer Paul Cassirer bought it on May 10, 1901.[16] Later that month, on May 23, Karl Ernst Osthaus, a patron of the European avant-garde, paid 18,000 Goldmarks for Lise with a Parasol and brought it to his Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany.[27] The painting was moved to Essen when the museum relocated in 1922 as the Museum Folkwang.[28]

Related work

A sister painting, Portrait of Lise (Lise holding a bouquet of wild flowers) (1867), was completed around the same time as the larger Lise with a Parasol. In both works, she appears in a forest wearing a similar dress and the same earrings, but in Portrait of Lise she wears a blue rather than a black sash.[29] House notes the thematic and narrative similarity between Lise with a Parasol and La Promenade (1870), as the expectations of the waiting woman in Lise with a Parasol are fulfilled in La Promenade, with the private, romantic rendezvous between lovers in the forest, a popular nineteenth century theme.[24] A later painting, Woman with Parasol Seated in the Garden (1872), features Lise seated, modeling a similar dress with a red sash, hat, and parasol.[30]

Lise with a Parasol was the first of Renoir's paintings to feature a human figure with light filtering through plant leaves from above. Later works by Renoir that make use of this same style include The Swing (1876) and Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876).[31]

Year	Image	Title	Type	Dimensions	Gallery	Notes
1867		''Portrait of Lise (Lise holding a bouquet of wild flowers)	Oil on canvas	156 cm × 129 cm	National Museum of Western Art	The sister painting to Lise with a Parasol
1870		La Promenade	Oil on canvas	813 cm × 648 cm	Getty Center	The romantic rendezvous hinted at in Lise with a Parasol
1872		Woman with Parasol Seated in the Garden	Oil on canvas	46 cm × 37.9 cm	Private collection	Similar outfit to Lise with a Parasol

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

• Description at the Museum Folkwang

На других языках

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- [en] Lise with a Parasol

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[es] Lise (Mujer con sombrilla)

Lise, también conocido como Lise con sombrilla, es un óleo sobre tela pintado por el artista francés Pierre-Auguste Renoir, en 1867 durante su periodo inicial en el Salón. La pintura muestra a su modelo Lise Tréhot de cuerpo entero posando en un bosque. Lleva un vestido de muselina blanco y sujeta una sombrilla de encaje negro para protegerse del sol, cuya luz se filtra través de las hojas, contrastando su cara en la sombra y su cuerpo a la luz, destacando su vestido más que su rostro. Después de que varias de sus pinturas fueran rechazadas por el Salón, Lise fue finalmente aceptada y exhibida en mayo de 1868.

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[fr] Lise à l'ombrelle

Lise à l'ombrelle est un tableau d'Auguste Renoir daté de 1867.

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[it] Lisa con ombrello

Lisa con ombrello è un dipinto del pittore francese Pierre-Auguste Renoir, realizzato nel 1867 e conservato al Folkwang Museum di Essen.

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