A unique auction is set to take place of one of Pierre Auguste Renoir’s still-life paintings along with the subject it depicts.
Fleurs dans un vase will be sold in London next month along with the original Italian ceramic vase the artist painted in the composition.
“It is very rare for us to be able to bring a painting to life quite so tangibly, by pairing it with the very object that sat in front of the artist as he put paint to canvas,” Tania Remoundos, a Sotheby’s specialist, said.
Remoundos said that while museum exhibitions were occasionally able to show the finished artwork along with the prop that inspired it, it did not happen in the auction world.
The blue and orange vase that is thought to have been made in Caltagirone, Sicily, in about 1700 was a favourite prop of the French artist, who used it in several still-life paintings as well as in other compositions.
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It remained with the Impressionist pioneer until his death in 1919 and then passed to Jean-Emmanuel Renoir his great-grandson.
It was recently reunited with the painting, both of which will be put up for auction by Sotheby’s in London on March 6 with an estimate of between £2 million and £3 million.
Remoundos said Renoir, one of the most influential western artists of the past 500 years, had begun his career working with porcelain. The artist was born in Limoges, a key French centre for its production.
“The fascination with this jewel-like vase was perhaps a nod to Renoir’s apprenticeship as a porcelain painter with the Lévy Brothers. In this painting, the vase itself is executed with just as much care as the rest of the composition,” Remoundos said, adding the auction house was delighted with the unique sale.
“We’ve seen rare instances of this [artwork and prop] peppered in museum shows over the years, for example with Matisse and the items treasured in his studio, but not at auction, or indeed for sale, before.
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“This occasion is down to sheer happy circumstance, made all the more special knowing that this very vase features in some of his most celebrated works, one of which hangs in a museum.”
Fleurs dans un vase has not been exhibited since 1969 when it appeared at Galerie Durand-Ruel, the Parisian gallery that first bought the work from Renoir in 1890. It has never previously been exhibited with the vase.
Renoir was a prolific still-life painter who once said that for him “painting flowers is a form of mental relaxation …. I do not need the concentration that I need when I am faced with a model”.
The genre was also an important source of revenue for the artist in the late 19th century when the first Impressionists were still facing hostility from academia, critics and the art-buying public. However, still-life paintings were in demand from affluent Parisians.
The auction house, which will show the painting and vase at its London base from this week before next month’s sale, said it did not appear that the flowers from Renoir’s composition had been kept.
