DESCRIPTION
At the behest of Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard, from 1895 to 1905 French lithographer Auguste Clot created a series of counterproofs after pastels by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. To create the artworks, Clot applied a damp sheet of tissue-thin Japan paper over a pastel drawing and pulled the two sheets through a lithographic press. This created a mirror image softer in tone than the original pastels, but which retain their ethereal qualities. The original pastel, c. 1875-76, of the present lot is in the National Museum, Belgrade, Serbia (illustrated in Denis Rouart, The Unknown Degas and Renoir in the National Museum of Belgrade, New York, 1964, pp. 98-9).
Renoir gave Vollard his blessing to make the counterproofs; however, the dealer kept them hidden on expectations of a rising art market. After Vollard’s death in 1939, the collection was acquired by Henri Petiet, a Parisian print dealer and collector. The counterproofs descended through the Petiet family after his death in the early 1980s. Marc Rosen, a New York dealer, discovered the counterproofs in early 2004 when the heirs asked him to review the estate. In 2005, 34 of the re-discovered counterproofs were exhibited for the first time in a century in Renoir: The Pastel Counterproofs, held at Adelson Galleries in New York, in conjunction with Marc Rosen.
