Once again, and it getting sort of customary, I bring to your attention a work by an Impressionist master who, obviously has nothing to do with the Old Masters series (unless if we consider his extensive travelling during the 80s that helped him to move from Impressionist towards a type of Renaissance styled naturalism focussed on his sketches) in my Instagram account; anyway, I chose it to illustrate the dance scene in Visconti’s Il Gattopardo, where Burt Lancaster dances with a very young Claudia Cardinale.
Obviously, there is no comparison between the two images except the music that, in our minds, leads us both to the waltz of the film and to the bohemian atmosphere of the little village on the banks on the Seine, Bougival, outside Paris where people used to flock during the week-ends as this was a very fashionable place to be at the time and where Impressionist artists like to spend their time in their open-air cafés
In a way, carpe diem in the work of Renoir. (Perhaps, it should have been more appropriate to have chosen instead Renoir’s City Dance (1883), at the Musée d’Orsay, as the characters are already fittingly dressed for the occasion!) But that brimmed-straw hat of the man and the red straw one of the young woman (both friends of the artist) are superb pieces of intense colour which, in my mind’s eye, makes the whole composition alluring and pleasurable to look at, without forgetting the warm sensation of “feeling, hearing” they moving through that sandy floor covered with some cigarettes butts lying on it.
Dance at Bougival (1883). Oil on canvas. Technique Oil on canvas, 181.9 x 98.1 cm. Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Jesús Lorenzo Vieites
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Italian Old Masters (Chiefly!) 