Pastel counterproof on tissue-thin Japan paper mounted on cream wove paper, circa 1900. 573x467 mm; 22 1/2x18 3/8 inches. Signed with the artist's monogram, from the original pastel, lower left recto. Ex-collection Ambroise Vollard, Paris; and Henri M. Petiet, Paris.
A counterproof of a pastel drawing is created by applying a damp sheet of paper (in this case the tissue-thin Japan paper) over a fresh pastel drawing and rubbing the damp sheet in order to pick up some of the pigment from the original drawing. Many times, the artist adds color to enhance the counterproof.
This process was employed extensively throughout the 18th-century by artists such as François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who used it to make multiples of their chalk drawings. In the late 19th-century, Impressionist artists such as Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt and Renoir found that the technique appealed to the atmospheric effects they were trying to achieve in their work.
While Degas' counterproofs have been known and avidly collected since his lifetime, some 30 counterproofs by Renoir surfaced for the first time in 1980 in the estate of the Parisian dealer Petiet, who had acquired them from Vollard, Renoir's dealer, in 1939. See Vollard 1226.
