How are you?
Currently, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 64th story is “The Portrait of
Irène Cahen d’Anvers” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
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| Self-portrait, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875) |
The “Portrait of Irène Cahen
d’Anvers” is an oil painting by the French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste
Renoir.
Commissioned by the wealthy French
Jewish banker, Louis Cahen d'Anvers in 1880, the painting depicts his
8-year-old daughter, Irène Cahen d'Anvers.
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| Louis Cahen d'Anvers, Léon Bonnat (1901) |
Renoir, who frequently painted
portraits for the families of the Jewish community living in Paris in the 1870s
and 80s, met Louis Cahen d'Anvers through the art collector Charles Ephrussi,
the owner of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.
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| Charles Ephrussi, Jean Patricot (1905) |
Louis commissioned Renoir for two
portraits of his three daughters, one of which depicts the eldest daughter
Irène, and the other depicts her sisters Alice and Elizabeth, which is now
known as “Pink and Blue.”
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| Pink and Blue, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1881) |
Today, the painting is considered
as one of Renoir's masterpieces, but at the time, Louis was so dissatisfied
with the painting that he hung the painting in the servants' quarters and even
delayed paying Renoir for the painting.
In 1883, the painting was exhibited
for the first time in Renoir's first solo exhibition at Paul Durand-Ruel's
Boulevard des Capucines gallery, and was purchased in 1910 by the Camondo
family, which Irène had married into.
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| Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (c. 1910) |
The model for the painting, Irène
Cahen d’Anvers, was 8 years old when it was painted.
The eldest daughter of Count Louis Cahen d'Anvers, she married Count Moïse de Camondo in 1891. However, the two fell apart in 1897 due to her affair with Count Charles Sampieri, Camondo's stable master, to which Irène would later marry and divorce. Irène and Camondo had two children, Nissim and Béatrice. Nissim became a fighter pilot of the French Air Force during World War I and was killed in action over Lorraine in 1917.
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| Moïse de Camondo |
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| Nissim and his sister Béatrice de Camondo (1916) |
In 1935, Camondo bequeathed his Parisian mansion, including his major collection of art, to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris to be used to establish the Musée Nissim de Camondo in honor of him and Irène's son. Because of their Jewish descent, Béatrice, along with her ex-husband and two children, was executed in Auschwitz by the Nazis during World War II. In 1963, Irène died in Paris at the age of 91.
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| Grand Salon, Musée Nissim de Camondo |
After the fall of France, the
painting was looted from Château de Chambord by the Nazis and became the
private collection of Hermann Göring, along with many other important pieces of
European art, and then the collection of German art dealer Gustav Rochlitz.
Re-appearing in 1946, the painting was exhibited in Paris as one of the
"French masterpieces found in Germany."
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| Hermann Göring |
Later, the painting was acquired by
Emil Georg Bührle, a Swiss industrialist, German-born art collector, and CEO of
the OC Oerlikon, a wartime supplier of the German military, along with dozens
of other artworks stolen by the Nazis. Currently, the painting is owned by the
E.G. Bührle Collection in Zürich.
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| Emil Georg Bührle |
In 2014, the painting appeared in
the movie "The Monuments Men" as one of the works of art saved by the
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. In 2018, as part of a series of
Impressionist artworks on loan from the E.G. Bührle Collection, it was
exhibited in the National Art Center in Tokyo and gained popularity in Japan.
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| The National Art Center, Tokyo |
Thank you.
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