GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Tradition has it that Renoir was in love with Lise Trehot, the woman he portrays in this work. From 1866 through early 1872 he painted Lise again and again, until, in 1872, their relationship came to an abrupt end with her marriage to another man. In its informality Lise Sewing is not a strictly traditional portrait, but its casual intimacy and lack of pose are what make it so engaging. The artist caught the girl in a pensive moment, absorbed in her stitching. Her face is down-turned, her lips are parted in sheer concentration on her task. Renoir lavished attention on the details of her features: her dark brow, her ear adorned with a modish red drop-earring, her ample mass of raven black hair, tied with a red ribbon. His keen observation of detail is especially evident in her nimble fingers, poised at work with cloth, needle, thread, and thimble. The gray and pale blue stripes of Lise's dress, as well as the swatch of royal blue material on which she works, are passages of pure painterly delectation. The background is roughly filled in with patches of blue, gray, and brown.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Lise Sewing", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 105.
NOTES
c. 1867-1868
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction
DMA label copy, Reves install 2015:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir met Lise Tréhot (1848-1922) in 1866, and they formed a liaison that lasted more than six years, during which she served as his principal model. She can be identified in more than a dozen of his paintings, each time, in a different guise or playing a different role.
Lise Sewing is not in any strict sense a portrait. Rather, Renoir used Tréhot as the model for a painting of a fashionable married woman. it draws upon a common theme treated by other impressionist artists: the quiet and unself-conscious domestic routine of a woman sewing. Lise's focused gaze draws our attention to the poised needle, which, like the gold wedding band, red earring, and red hair band, stands out as a bright accent in an otherwise cool palette of grays and blues.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 34.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir met Lise Tréhot in the spring of 1866, when he painted in and around the Forest of Fontainebleau with Jules Le Coeur and Alfred Sisley. Between that year and early 1872, he painted her obsessively, which has led most scholars to conclude that they were lovers. In 1872, Tréhot abandoned Renoir and married a young architect, Georges Brière de l'Isle. Tradition holds that she never again saw Renoir.
Of the two portraits of Tréhot in the Reves Collection, Lise Sewing is the earlier. Douglas Cooper, who studied both portraits and all the surviving family documents, concluded from literary and stylistic evidence that the painting, along with another (Barnes Collection, Merion, Pennsylvania), was done in 1866, shortly after Renoir met Tréhot (Cooper 1959). Although Cooper's arguments are justified, they are not utterly convincing, and the painting can be more closely compared on stylistic grounds to a work signed and dated 1868 at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, entitled Lise, or The Gypsy Girl.
Lise Sewing is not in any strict sense a portrait. Rather, Renoir used Tréhot as a model for a conventional painting of a woman sewing. His allusions to current fashion link this representation with the contemporary paintings of Manet, while the broad treatment of the background and sparing use of the palette knife have often evoked comparison with Courbet's paintings of the mid-1860s. This comparison is compelling; Renoir, like Courbet, was a painter of flesh and blood, not of fashion or appearance, and the fact that the subject is portrayed as self-occupied and married gives the male viewer, for whom it might have been made, an even greater pleasure in admiring the beauty of this moral and, hence, inaccessible woman.
Remarks: Title Notes: Salon (What does this mean? Former Title? Salon entry?)
Related Object: 1985.R.58 Pierre Auguste Renoir, Lise in a White Shawl
Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas, Texas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1985), 103. Rozelle is editor, unsure of author:
The two paintings of Lise Trehot by Renoir in the Reves Collection bracket an important chapter in the artist's personal and professional life. Although it is not known exactly when or how Renoir struck up a friendship with Lise (it seems most likely that they met through Renoir's friend Jules Le Coeur, whose lover, Clemence Trehot, was Lise's elder sister), by 1866 she was modelling for him and for the next six years remained his favorite model as well as probably his mistress. "Lise Sewing" a tender and luministically subtle portrait done under the dual influence of Courbet and Corot, signals the beginning of this relationship, while its companion in the Reves Collection, the "Lise in a White Shawl", marks its final year. Until these two outstanding examples of Renoir's early development were purchased by the Reves in 1958, they remained virtually unknown outside Lise's family through which they descended.
At the time of the first portrait, Lise was 18 and Renoir 25. From the beginning, she can be identified in at least twelve more of his paintings, each time in a different guise. None are more intimate, however, than his first portrait of her, which is invested with a special personal feeling even though it draws upon a common theme treated by other Impressionist artists--the quiet and unselfconscious domestic routine of a woman sewing. The subdued, almost sfumato lighting adds to the sense of quietude. Even the bold stripes of the dress, a garment pattern that reappears in other early Renoir paintings as well as contemporaneous works by Monet, are kept somewhat muted, so as not to overpower the lovely modelling of the face and the focused attention on the poised needle which, like the gold ring, red earring and red hair band, stands out as a bright accent in an otherwise cool palette of greys and blues. The paint itself is applied fairly thinly and smoothly except in the blue cloth Lise is sewing, where the strokes have a lush thickness. The background is especially fluid, with a loose, abstract scumbling of greys and browns that stops just short of the edges of the canvas. Light reworkings are apparent in several areas, and indeed, Renoir signed the picture twice, a very faint first signature appearing 1 1/2 inches below the second.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
74812520: UMO Music & Masterpieces: French Art & Songs
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- The National Gallery, London~View a painting of Lise depicted as a nymph by Renoir.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- Lise Trehot is depicted in over twenty paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir.
- Lise Sewing was owned by the sitter throughout her life.
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1985.R.59
Category
rules_operator
AND
General Description
Tradition has it that Renoir was in love with Lise Trehot, the woman he portrays in this work. From 1866 through early 1872 he painted Lise again and again, until, in 1872, their relationship came to an abrupt end with her marriage to another man. In its informality Lise Sewing is not a strictly traditional portrait, but its casual intimacy and lack of pose are what make it so engaging. The artist caught the girl in a pensive moment, absorbed in her stitching. Her face is down-turned, her lips are parted in sheer concentration on her task. Renoir lavished attention on the details of her features: her dark brow, her ear adorned with a modish red drop-earring, her ample mass of raven black hair, tied with a red ribbon. His keen observation of detail is especially evident in her nimble fingers, poised at work with cloth, needle, thread, and thimble. The gray and pale blue stripes of Lise's dress, as well as the swatch of royal blue material on which she works, are passages of pure painterly delectation. The background is roughly filled in with patches of blue, gray, and brown.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, "Lise Sewing", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 105.
Fun Facts
- Lise Trehot is depicted in over twenty paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir.
- Lise Sewing was owned by the sitter throughout her life.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
c. 1867-1868
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction
DMA label copy, Reves install 2015:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir met Lise Tréhot (1848-1922) in 1866, and they formed a liaison that lasted more than six years, during which she served as his principal model. She can be identified in more than a dozen of his paintings, each time, in a different guise or playing a different role.
Lise Sewing is not in any strict sense a portrait. Rather, Renoir used Tréhot as the model for a painting of a fashionable married woman. it draws upon a common theme treated by other impressionist artists: the quiet and unself-conscious domestic routine of a woman sewing. Lise's focused gaze draws our attention to the poised needle, which, like the gold wedding band, red earring, and red hair band, stands out as a bright accent in an otherwise cool palette of grays and blues.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 34.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir met Lise Tréhot in the spring of 1866, when he painted in and around the Forest of Fontainebleau with Jules Le Coeur and Alfred Sisley. Between that year and early 1872, he painted her obsessively, which has led most scholars to conclude that they were lovers. In 1872, Tréhot abandoned Renoir and married a young architect, Georges Brière de l'Isle. Tradition holds that she never again saw Renoir.
Of the two portraits of Tréhot in the Reves Collection, Lise Sewing is the earlier. Douglas Cooper, who studied both portraits and all the surviving family documents, concluded from literary and stylistic evidence that the painting, along with another (Barnes Collection, Merion, Pennsylvania), was done in 1866, shortly after Renoir met Tréhot (Cooper 1959). Although Cooper's arguments are justified, they are not utterly convincing, and the painting can be more closely compared on stylistic grounds to a work signed and dated 1868 at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, entitled Lise, or The Gypsy Girl.
Lise Sewing is not in any strict sense a portrait. Rather, Renoir used Tréhot as a model for a conventional painting of a woman sewing. His allusions to current fashion link this representation with the contemporary paintings of Manet, while the broad treatment of the background and sparing use of the palette knife have often evoked comparison with Courbet's paintings of the mid-1860s. This comparison is compelling; Renoir, like Courbet, was a painter of flesh and blood, not of fashion or appearance, and the fact that the subject is portrayed as self-occupied and married gives the male viewer, for whom it might have been made, an even greater pleasure in admiring the beauty of this moral and, hence, inaccessible woman.
Remarks: Title Notes: Salon (What does this mean? Former Title? Salon entry?)
Related Object: 1985.R.58 Pierre Auguste Renoir, Lise in a White Shawl
Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas, Texas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1985), 103. Rozelle is editor, unsure of author:
The two paintings of Lise Trehot by Renoir in the Reves Collection bracket an important chapter in the artist's personal and professional life. Although it is not known exactly when or how Renoir struck up a friendship with Lise (it seems most likely that they met through Renoir's friend Jules Le Coeur, whose lover, Clemence Trehot, was Lise's elder sister), by 1866 she was modelling for him and for the next six years remained his favorite model as well as probably his mistress. "Lise Sewing" a tender and luministically subtle portrait done under the dual influence of Courbet and Corot, signals the beginning of this relationship, while its companion in the Reves Collection, the "Lise in a White Shawl", marks its final year. Until these two outstanding examples of Renoir's early development were purchased by the Reves in 1958, they remained virtually unknown outside Lise's family through which they descended.
At the time of the first portrait, Lise was 18 and Renoir 25. From the beginning, she can be identified in at least twelve more of his paintings, each time in a different guise. None are more intimate, however, than his first portrait of her, which is invested with a special personal feeling even though it draws upon a common theme treated by other Impressionist artists--the quiet and unselfconscious domestic routine of a woman sewing. The subdued, almost sfumato lighting adds to the sense of quietude. Even the bold stripes of the dress, a garment pattern that reappears in other early Renoir paintings as well as contemporaneous works by Monet, are kept somewhat muted, so as not to overpower the lovely modelling of the face and the focused attention on the poised needle which, like the gold ring, red earring and red hair band, stands out as a bright accent in an otherwise cool palette of greys and blues. The paint itself is applied fairly thinly and smoothly except in the blue cloth Lise is sewing, where the strokes have a lush thickness. The background is especially fluid, with a loose, abstract scumbling of greys and browns that stops just short of the edges of the canvas. Light reworkings are apparent in several areas, and indeed, Renoir signed the picture twice, a very faint first signature appearing 1 1/2 inches below the second.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
74812520: UMO Music & Masterpieces: French Art & Songs
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
1985.R.59
source file
object_notes_2_d-0118.xml.nores