DALLAS, TEXAS.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents “Renoir and Algeria,” on view through August 31, 2003. Fifteen little-known paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicting subjects in Algeria will be on view in Renoir and Algeria at the Dallas Museum of Art from June 8 to August 31, 2003. Moreover, the Dallas exhibition will expand the special focus on Renoir’s Orientalist period to a wider survey of the impressionist master’s career with an additional 40 paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the Museum’s collections, as well as loans from other public and private collections.



The exhibition, the first to examine in detail Renoir’s paintings treating Algerian subjects, shows the French impressionist to be an Orientalist of unsuspected depth, in the company of other modern painter-travelers, such as Delacroix and Matisse, who were attracted to the exotic world of North Africa. Although Renoir was fascinated by Algeria even before he traveled there, visits to the North African country in 1881 and 1882 inspired many of his Algerian works. The exhibition explores the full range of Renoir’s treatment of Algeria, from paintings made in his Paris studio before his trips, to images of the landscape and people of Algeria painted on the spot, to later works drawn from his memories of North Africa. Also included will be a selection of period photographs of Algiers and its environs made by French photographers during the period that Renoir visited. These photographs bring to life the sites and the people that form the basis for Renoir’s paintings, while giving an overview of his career around the centerpiece of Algerian works.



Renoir and Algeria is one of a variety of exhibitions presented by the Dallas Museum of Art during the Museum’s centennial anniversary year. One of the Museum’s objectives throughout the year is to present exhibitions that emphasize and expand on the DMA’s comprehensive collections, which range from important holdings in African and Indonesian objects to superb examples of European modernism. The Museum’s treasured impressionist collection includes 18 paintings and drawings by Renoir, including two portraits of his model, Lise Tréhot, found in the unique Wendy and Emery Reves Collection of impressionist paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts.



Museums loaning works to Renoir and Algeria include the Musée National des Beaux-Arts, Algiers; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the National Gallery of Art, London; and other public and private collections from around the world.



Organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, the exhibition of Algerian works provides a fresh perspective on an artist celebrated primarily for his images of Parisian modern life and his portraits of European subjects. Dorothy Kosinski, Senior Curator for Paintings and Sculpture, and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, is organizer of the expanded version of the exhibition, which will only be seen at the Dallas Museum of Art.



“These works provide a forum for new scholarship on Renoir’s Algerian experience in the context of Islamic and French colonial ambitions in 19th-century North Africa,” said Kosinski. “The enlarged exhibition will also give the opportunity to view and study works that reflect the artist’s full career through portraiture, landscape, and the theme of the bathers.



“The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to introduce unfamiliar works by an artist whose paintings form the cornerstone of the impressionist movement, while at the same time placing these works in the fuller context of his entire career. The Dallas Museum of Art is fortunate to be able to draw on a wide range of works by Renoir, both from our own collection and from collectors and other art institutions.”



In his words, Renoir wanted to visit Algiers because “I wanted to see what the land of the sun was like. . . . It is exquisite . . . an extraordinary richness of nature.” Although Renoir illustrated the same landscape painted by his predecessors and those who came after him, he employed his signature impressionist techniques to reflect the dazzling light of North Africa on natural phenomena, unfamiliar buildings, and vegetation. Other paintings in the exhibition depict the diverse population of Algiers, which encompassed indigenous peoples, European colonists, and waves of tourists. An important element of the exhibition and catalogue will be to present new research on the kinds of sitters available to Renoir, his interactions with local intermediaries, and his possible use of the kind of photographs produced by the Geiser or Leroux studios in Algiers.



After Renoir returned to France in the late spring of 1882, the subject of North Africa persisted in his paintings, indirectly influencing some of the lush landscapes he painted along the Mediterranean coast in France. Several paintings of dancers in Algerian dress show the inspiration that influenced Renoir later in his life.



In conjunction with the exhibition, Yale University Press has produced a fully illustrated 176-page catalogue that will become a fundamental addition to Renoir scholarship. The principal author is Dr. Roger Benjamin, Senior Lecturer at the School of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne, and one of the worlds’ foremost experts on the history of French Orientalist painting. Professor David Prochaska of the University of Illinois—the leading American historian on French Algiers—has also written an essay situating Renoir’s personal experience within the broader context of Franco-Algerian social and political history.