Sur la Plage à Berneval

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An original Pierre-Auguste Renoir Drypoint print.

c. 1892

Original drypoint printed in black ink on laid paper.

A superb lifetime impression of Delteil and Stella’s second state of three, printed prior to the edges of the plate being beveled, showing touches of rich burr on the hair and clothing of the girls in the foreground and on the bathers in the distance, from the edition published by Floury in the Théodore Duret book Les peintres Impressionnistes, 2nd edition, Paris, 1919.

Catalog: Delteil 5 ii/iii; Stella 5

Size Image: 5 3/8 x 3 11/16 inches

Sheet Size: 9 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches

This study is of one of Renoir’s favorite models, Julie, the daughter of Berthe Morisot, seen on a holiday in Normandy in 1892 or 1893, together with her cousin Paulette Gobillard (it is these two girls who on the same holiday inspired Renoir’s famous study of “Le Chapeau Épinglé”). Renoir accompanied Berthe Morisot and her family on a number of such holiday trips and they inspired some of his most attractive compositions.

“Sur la Plage” is one of Renoir’s earliest prints. In its handling of the soft pattern of the shadows and the blended contours it is typical of Renoir’s approach to the interpretation of the sensation of light at this date. Renoir was attracted to drypoint as a medium (probably at the suggestion of Mary Cassatt) because the dry working of the copperplate allowed him to create a strong sense of tonality in the line.

This impression is an unusually fine impression of the first issued edition. Renoir had completed the plate in 1892/93 but he pulled only an extremely small number of proofs at that date. In 1919 the first issued edition was arranged with the critic and publisher Théodore Duret. For this edition the plate was left untouched from the early proofs, and in the first impressions of the edition was still very rich. It was steel-faced creating the third state for the reissue in 1923.