Lot 399: Danseuse au tambourin I

After Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1814-1919) and Louis Morel (1887-1975) Danseuse au tambourin I signed 'Renoir' (lower centre left); numbered 'A', stamped with the foundry mark 'CIRE C.VALSUANI PERDUE' and inscribed 'BRONZE' (lower right) bronze with dark brown patina 24 3/8 x 17 3/8 in. (62 x 44.2 cm.) Conceived in plaster in 1918

62 x 44.2 cm.

P. Haesaerts, Renoir Sculptor, New York, 1947, no. 22 (the terracotta version illustrated, pl. XLIV). B. Ehrlich White, Renoir, his life, art, and letters, New York, 1984, p. 277 (the terracotta version illustrated).

Galerie Tanner, Zurich. Emil G. Bührle, Zurich, by whom acquired from the above in 1936, and thence by descent to the present owner.

In 1918, after the departure of Richard Guino, with whom he had collaborated on roughly twenty sculptures, Renoir engaged the services of the young sculptor Louis Morel. Together they created three terracotta reliefs on Dionysian themes, including the present subject. "It is a moving fact that the very last sculptures of this old man, who was paralyzed and not far from his end, evoked music and dance" (P. Hæsærts, op. cit., p. 33). As Guino had done before him, Morel modelled the reliefs from drawings by Renoir, whose hands were arthritic and incapable of working in even the most malleable materials. Renoir had planned a further relief depicting a dancing figure wearing a wreath, but became too ill to continue working on it.