Description
A bearded man reclines deep in an armchair, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, propped on a low tufted stool, a book or paper held open in both hands as he reads with his head bowed. His dark suit and waistcoat swallow most of the canvas in near-black paint, relieved only by a pale cravat at his throat and the white pages catching light. He is entirely absorbed in what he is reading, unaware of, or indifferent to, the viewer.
Behind him the wall is covered in a strongly patterned wallpaper, yellow-green ground scattered with dark blue-black branches, leaves and berries in a loosely Japanese-inspired design, painted with quick, calligraphic strokes very different from the dense, blocked-in handling of the figure. That flat, decorative background pushes the man forward in the space, his dark form reading almost as a silhouette against the glowing wallpaper. A signature is inscribed at the upper left, and a scatter of small objects, brushes or pencils, rests on the stool near his feet.
Painted in 1871, in the years just after the Franco-Prussian War, this is an early Renoir, close in spirit to the tonal, dark-clothed portraits his generation of painters made of one another, informal likenesses of friends captured in a private, unguarded moment rather than posed sittings. The strong wallpaper pattern shows Renoir’s early interest in decorative surface even before his color lightened into full Impressionism.
On a wall the picture holds attention through contrast, a dense dark figure set against a bright, busy field of pattern, calm and readerly in mood, a good choice for a study or library wall where a quieter, more literary picture is wanted.
