This research examines the nature of Renoir's influence on Picasso in the years following World War I. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical and cultural context in which Picasso became attracted to Renoir's art and then to discuss the manner in which association with Renoir's influence on Picasso's art is made visible, with particular reference to three works: Portrait de Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1919/20), a pencil-charcoal drawing; Le ménage Sisley d'apres 'Les Fiancés' d'Auguste Renoir (1919), a pencil drawing; and Quatre baigneuses (1920), a pastel.
It is impossible to separate the details of Picasso's biography from the details of his work. The onset of World War I was decisive both personally and professionally for Picasso because it had the effect of interfering with--not to say breaking up--the salon of modernist artists and writers among whom Picasso had lived and worked for several years in Paris. At the time of the war, Picasso was part of the artistic salon that also included Gertrude Stein, Leo Stein, poet and critic Guilliame Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, and George's Braque. When war broke out, Apollinaire and Braque went into the army. According to Mailer (367), members of the artistic coterie in Paris thought ill of Picasso for not joining up, a feeling compounded by his apparent desertion of Apollinaire and Braque when they were wounded in battle.
Picasso's artistic reputation had just emerged when war broke out. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which decisively secured Picasso's reputation, had been painted in 1907 but was not exhibited publicly at all until 1916 and was not widely known until 1937, when it was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. However, in 1913, Apollinaire published Cubist Painters, which argued that Cubism was a legitimate "school" of art, and which had the effect of lending weight to Picasso's growing fame as an artist. Daix refers to the "dawn of Cubism" (79), w...