愛藝

At the age of 40， Renoir finally had the motivation and means to travel abroad. On his first trip， he went to Algeria， a longtime colony of France1. During the month he spent there in the spring of 1881， he made some of the most remarkable landscapes of his career， developing innovative pictorial techniques to depict the North African locales. Renoir notably avoided the oft-represented sites that had by then been established as the areas central picturesque motifs. In Italy in the following year， however， he sought out famous sites， such as the Piazza San Marco in Venice， representing them in a vivid and coloristic style.

Gondola， Venice， is the closest to a genre scene of any picture Renoir painted in Venice. A gondolier in striped shirt has transported two ladies across the lagoon， foreign tourists as we can tell from the French style of hat one of them wears. They are about to touch down at what is probably the island of San Giorgio Maggiore， ready to explore the monumental sixteenth-century church by Palladio2 that dominates it. An Italian girl sits on the waters edge， her head turned away from the approaching visitors in the direction of the artist who has positioned himself a few steps higher up to better survey the scene. Her short hair suggests that she is the same model Renoir also drew in pencil and sketched in oils at about this time. This conjunction of a gondolier and female Italian model recalls one of the few anecdotes Renoir told about his time in the city. He reported to his friend Charles Deudon that while he wanted to paint figures in Venice， he had trouble finding models. He saw one girl “beautiful as a Madonna. My gondolier tells me he knows her， I hug him for joy.” Once she posed， however， Renoir was unhappy with the self-conscious result， concluding that “to get someone to pose， you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.”

Venice was a favorite subject for Impressionist. Monet painted his masterpiece San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk in 1908. Gondola， Venice recalls the vivid scenes of The Grand Canal of Venice by Manet. What is specific to Renoir， however， is the conjunction of large-scale figures in the foreground， including the uniquely Venetian shape of the gondola itself， and a panoramic view of the city as seen across the waters.

40歲時，雷諾阿終于有了出國旅行的想法，也有能力實現(xiàn)這一愿望。他第一次出國去的是阿爾及利亞，該國很長一段時間都是法國的殖民地。1881年春，他在阿爾及利亞待了一個月，其間創(chuàng)新了繪畫技巧來描繪北非風貌，創(chuàng)作出繪畫生涯中最出色的一些風景畫。雷諾阿顯然有意避開了常常入畫的景點，那些景點當時已是公認的地標性美景。然而，第二年在意大利，他卻選了威尼斯圣馬可廣場這樣的名勝，畫風靈動且色彩鮮明。

《威尼斯貢多拉》是雷諾阿在威尼斯創(chuàng)作的所有作品中最接近風俗畫的一幅。一個身穿條紋衫的貢多拉船夫載著兩位女士穿過威尼斯?jié)暫?，其中一位戴著一頂法式帽子，從中可以看出她們是外國游客。一行人即將在圣喬治·馬焦雷島上岸，參觀島上的主體建筑——16世紀帕拉迪歐設(shè)計的那座宏偉教堂。一個意大利女孩坐在水邊，她的視線從逐漸靠近的游客轉(zhuǎn)向了畫家所處的方向，畫家就在離她幾步遠的略高處，那里可以更好地觀察整個場景。女孩的短發(fā)透露出，她就是那個時期雷諾阿鉛筆畫和油筆速寫所用的那個模特。貢多拉船夫和意大利女模特的這個組合讓人想起雷諾阿自述的一樁趣事，其實他在威尼斯生活遇到的趣事并不多。雷諾阿曾對朋友查爾斯·杜頓說，他想在威尼斯畫人物，卻苦于找不到模特。有一次他看到一個女孩“美得就像圣母馬利亞。我的船夫跟我說他認識她，我高興地擁抱了他”;可是，女孩做模特擺姿勢時顯得很不自在，雷諾阿對此不太滿意，他總結(jié)說，“要讓一個人擺好姿勢讓你畫，你們必須是非常好的朋友，而且最最重要的是，你們得在語言上能溝通”。

威尼斯是印象派最喜歡的創(chuàng)作對象。1908年，莫奈創(chuàng)作了《圣喬治·馬焦雷教堂的黃昏》。《威尼斯貢多拉》讓人想起馬奈的《威尼斯大運河》中的生動場景。然而，雷諾阿自有他的特色，那就是前景中眾多人物的組合呈現(xiàn)，包括形狀獨特的威尼斯貢多拉，以及隔水眺望的城市全景。