Interpretive Resource

Pierre Auguste Renoir devoted the early 1880’s to artistic exploration. In his masterpiece of 1881, Two Sisters (On the Terrace), he began to modify the loose handling and light-bleached palette of Impressionism, instead adopting tighter draftsmanship and bolder, more saturated colors. Thereafter, Renoir’s search for greater rigor and solidity in his art prompted him to reevaluate his materials and methods.

During these years, Renoir supported himself by executing marketable works, such as portraits and floral still lifes. While some sitters disliked his "new" style, which they felt was unflattering, the genre of still life posed no such problems and thus facilitated experimentation. As Renoir later explained: "I just let my brain rest when I paint flowers. I don’t experience the same tension as I do when confronted by the model. . . . I establish the tones, I study the values carefully without worrying about losing the picture. I don’t dare do this with a figure piece for fear of ruining it."

For Chrysanthemums Renoir adopted a challenging, labor-intensive technique. First, taking a canvas with a white, commercially prepared ground, he used a palette knife to lay down another ground of lead white paint. This second layer obscured the weave of the canvas and resulted in a smoother, more reflective surface. While it was still wet, Renoir quickly brushed in thin layers of wash-like paint, achieving a remarkable transparency and fluidity, particularly in the petals of the yellow-orange blossoms and in the background. Producing effects comparable to those of watercolor, Renoir’s wet-on-wet technique may also be likened to overglaze porcelain painting—a craft that, in his youth, he had learned as an apprentice. Perhaps past experiences helped him to find a way forward in his art.