Pivoines dans un vase

Auguste Renoir’s still life originates from a transitional phase. Only two years after completing this work, Renoir participated in a group exhibition in Paris which earned the exhibited artists—including Claude Monet (1840–1926), Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), and Paul Cézanne(1839–1906)—the derogatively intended nickname “Impressionists.”

During this creative period, Renoir’s pictures become lighter, although he employs a relatively limited spectrum of colors. Here, for example, he has rendered the peonies in primarily red and pink tones, which stand out in bold contrast to the dark green of the background. Renoir skillfully emphasizes the weight and the lightness of the individual flowers. In the left half of the picture in particular, he conjures a veritable sea of color from the overlapping flowers.

His choice of motif is no accident. At the beginning of the 1870s Renoir was financially insecure, so it is possible that his still life was a concession to the taste of potential buyers, the peony being highly popular in the bourgeois salons of the time.