Le Chapeau Epinglé

Le Chapeau Epinglé is an artwork realized by Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1894.

Etching and Drypoint.

II and final state.

Signed on a plate in the right margin.

Excellent lifetime impression, with beautiful inking and a very fine sheet. 

Renoir (1841 - 1919) was one of the most convinced and spontaneous interpreters of the impressionist movement. A prodigiously prolific artist, with no less than five thousand canvases to his credit and an equally conspicuous number of drawings and watercolours, Renoir also stood out for his versatility, so much so that we can distinguish numerous periods in his pictorial production. In any case, it is Renoir himself who speaks of his method of making art:

“I arrange my subject however I want, then I start painting it as a child would. I want red to be loud and ringing like a bell, when I can't I add more reds and other colors until I get it. There are no other tricks. I have no rules or methods; anyone can examine what I use or look at how I paint, and they will see that I have no secrets. I look at a nude and see myriads of tiny tints. I need to discover the ones that make the flesh vibrate on the canvas. Today we want to explain everything. But if you could explain a picture it would no longer be art. Would you like me to tell you what the two qualities of art are for me? It must be indescribable and inimitable ... The work of art must grab you, envelop you, transport you» it emerges from this quote that Renoir related to painting in an absolutely anti-intellectualistic way and, although he too was intolerant of academic conventionalisms, he never contributed to the cause of Impressionism with theoretical reflections or abstract declarations. In fact, he repudiates all forms of intellectualism and confesses a vivid trust in the concrete experience of painting, which is objectified in the only expressive means of brushes and palette: «working like a good worker», «painting worker», «making good painting» are in fact phrases that often recur in his epistolary. This decisive request for concreteness is reaffirmed by Renoir himself in his preface to the French edition of Cennino Cennini's Art Book (1911), where, in addition to providing advice and practical suggestions for aspiring painters, he states that «it might seem that we are very far from Cennino Cennini and from painting, yet this is not the case, since painting is a trade like carpentry and ironworking, and is subject to the same rules».