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Description: | Signed: yes Description: The Portrait of Wilhelm Mühlfeld (1854-1912) in the Southampton collection is dated 1910 and is a masterpiece of Renoir's maturity, fully revealing his exceptional skill as a sensitive portraitist. The painting belongs to a tradition of portraits by Impressionists such as Degas and Manet of their intellectual contemporaries. The sitter in this late work by Renoir was an oboist and composer, and a member of the Städtische Kürapelle in Wiesbaden from 1872 until 1891 when he retired to teach music. His more famous brother Richard was a celebrated clarinettist admired and composed for by Brahms. Renoir produced this portrait while he was on holiday with friends near Munich. Jean Renoir, his son, evocatively described the sitter's appearance when he argued with Renée Rivière (the future wife of Cezanne's son Paul) while they were together: §Mühlfeld became scarlet. Renoir predicted that he would explode some day, which seemed all the more likely in view of the countless jugs of dark beer he gulped down in an effort to calm himself§. Renoir's portrait, produced when he was confined to a wheelchair by arthritis, combines the painter's ever-present spirit of joie de vivre' in the sitter's pompous spectacled features, depicted with the bright exacting charm of his early work reminiscent of Boucher, with a freedom of stroke, particularly notable in the sitters undone red tie, that anticipates Abstract Expressionism with its boldness of touch. | Subjects: | Wilhelm) portrait (Mühlfeld | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Renoir, Pierre Auguste (French painter, printmaker, and sculptor, 1841-1919) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8403... | Go to resource |
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