MASP

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pink and Blue – The Cahen D'Anvers Girls, 1881

  • Author:
    Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • Bio:
    Limoges, França, 1841-Cagnes-sur-Mer, França ,1919
  • Title:
    Pink and Blue – The Cahen D'Anvers Girls
  • Date:
    1881
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    119 x 75,5 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação O povo de São Paulo, 1952
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00099
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



Renoir met Claude Monet (1840–1926) in his youth, when he attended studios and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. With Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), they formed the first nucleus of impressionists who renovated the technique and themes of painting of that time. In the group, Renoir was known for his scenes of Parisian cafés and bars as well as for his female nudes. He was interested in the depiction of the human figure, unlike the others, who were more concerned about capturing the visual sensation produced by the motif in the open air. The 12 paintings by Renoir in MASP’s collection cover almost all of the artist’s career, from his youth to his old age. Pink and Blue portrays the girls of the Cahen d’Anvers family. During the exhibition of this work at Fondation Pierre Gianadda, in Switzerland, in 1987, the cruel destiny of Elisabeth, the girl in blue, was revealed. While visiting the show, a nephew of hers recognized her image and wrote to MASP telling how, in 1944, she had died on a train on the way to the Auschwitz concentration camp, at the age of 69. This painting is outstanding in the overall set due to the exceptional detailing of the dresses, including the white reliefs that form the flounces and the glimmering effect of the satin.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2015

Source: Adriano Pedrosa (org.), Pocket MASP, São Paulo: MASP, 2020.




By Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo
The founder of the Masp, Assis Chateaubriand, a great admirer of Renoir, according to P. M. Bardi, when attributing the donation of Elisabeth and Alice Cahen D’Anvers – Pink and Blue to “the people of São Paulo,” was, intuitively, making a forecast. In fact, time has shown that this work is a flagship for the Masp Collection and, perhaps, the most popular and appreciated by those who visit the museum. It is one of the many portraits made by Renoir reminiscent of the impressive body length portraits painted by Van Dyck in the 17th century, in which the artist conveys through the colors and the smoothness of the tones all the effiorescence and the candor of childhood. The girls virtually materialize in front of the viewer, the girl in blue with her smug look and the pink one slightly annoyed, almost on the edge of tears. According to Camesasca, the most popular title of this work, which refers to the colors of the dresses, dates from 1900, when it was exhibited in the Berheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, and “is connected to the true nature of the work, with the variation of the two colors in shades of pastel that are ever-present from the dresses to the carnation, and which stand out thanks to the flamboyant coloration of the curtains and of the carpet”. The artist portrayed the two daughters of banker Louis Raphael Cahen d’ Anvers, blond Elisabeth, born in December 1874, and the younger Alice, born in February 1876, when they were respectively, six and five years old. Renoir executed several portraits for the families of the Jewish community of the time and Louis Cahen d’ Anvers was the wealthiest of them all, married to Louise Morpurgo, an Italian woman from a rich Trieste family. The artist was commissioned to execute several portraits of this family, whom he met through collector Charles Ephrussi, also a financier and director of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and the idea was to execute individual portraits of each of the girls. Therefore, he painted the portrait of the couple’s oldest daughter, Irene, which is currently part of the E. G. Buhrle Collection, in Zurich. Subsequently, the family decided that the two other sisters were to be portrayed together. The girls had to sit for the artist for several sessions, as recorded by Camesasca, until the end of February 1881, and Renoir then left for Algiers. Also according to the same author, now quoting Julian, “decades later, the youngest of the models, then a Lady, through marriage to General Townsend of Kut, remembered that the boredom of the sessions was offset by the pleasure of wearing the elegant lace dress”. On March 4th, Renoir wrote to Théodore Duret: “I left immediately after having finished the portrait of the Cahen girls, so exhausted that I can’t even tell if the painting is good or bad.” The two portraits of the Cahen girls were exhibited in the 1881 Salon. However, the painting of the two girls did not, apparently, please the family and they placed it in the servants’ quarters of the house, as well as delaying the payment of the relatively moderate sum of 1,500 francs to the artist for almost a year. In the beginning of the century, following up information given by Renoir himself, Bernheim-Jeune marchands found the work, apparently forgotten, in the sixth floor of a building on Avenue Foch, Paris. Bailey, in his comprehensive study of the artist, wrote: “In his comment on the 1881 Salon, critic Henry Havard observes that Renoir ‘had become wiser’ in his portrait of Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’ Anvers, and although he doesn’t go as far as suggesting that the artist changed his style to please his clients, he clearly assumed a formal baroque structure, devised to please their more conventional taste”. Lined up somewhat nervously in front of a heavy purple colored curtain, open to disclose the lavish interior – perhaps a fireplace with its appurtenances and a clock – the two girls, flawlessly combed and dressed, hold each other’s hand to feel more confident. Wearing identical formal dresses, with matching ribbons, waistbands, and stockings and their hair brushed into perfect bangs, Alice, five years old, to the left, looks as if she is on the very brink of tears, while her older sister Elisabeth, six years old, looks as if she is a little bit more at ease while posing. (...). He (Renoir) does not compromise in his representation of the reticent ‘Girls,’ nor does he adopt a sentimental approach. In a room bathed by “natural light”, Renoir portrays his tiny models at close range, the oldest one in a slightly countervailing position, giving life to a representation that might otherwise have looked static. His handling of the painting, always displaying virtuosity and self-confidence, creates a variety of surfaces in tune with the materials depicted. Thus, Renoir’s touch is smooth and shiny when painting the hair, the sashes, and stockings; it is encrusted like a jewel, in the frills and folds of the satin dresses, the white lace constructed with a certain amount of Naples yellow, and takes on a porcelain-like aspect in the execution of the faces and hands of the girls, drawn with extreme care, but even so not less lively”. Bailey also establishes the exact location where the work was executed: avenue Montaigne 66, in Paris, where the Cahen d’ Anvers had lived since 1873, and not the family home on the corner of rue Bassano and rue Bizet, where they moved in 1883-1884. Alice lived until 89 and died in Nice in 1965. Elisabeth had a tragic fate. Divorced from her first husband, diplomat and count Jean de Forceville, she married Alfred Marie Émile Denfert Rochereau, whom she also divorced. During the exhibition of Masp works in the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, in Martigny, Switzerland, in 1987, her nephew Jean de Monbrison wrote to the museum about her plight: she had converted to Catholicism while still young but was, nevertheless, sent to Auschwitz due to her Jewish origin and died on her way to the concentration camp, in March 1944, at the age of 69.

— Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



Search
the collection

Filter your search