Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Ambroise Vollard Dressed as a Toreador

Ambroise Vollard Dressed as a Toreador – a portrait painted at seventy-five

Ambroise Vollard Dressed as a Toreador is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1917. The original measures 83.6 cm x 102.6 cm and is held by the Nippon Television Network Corporation in Tokyo. We paint our version by hand in oils on canvas, in eight portrait sizes, from 40 x 50 to 150 x 180 cm. Among them is 84 x 103 cm, which matches the measurement of the original, with 110 x 140 cm for a larger wall.

A dealer in a matador’s suit, and a painter with brushes tied to his fingers

Ambroise Vollard was a picture dealer and an editor who sat for four of Renoir’s canvases; in this one he is dressed as a matador. While it was being painted the artist was seventy-five years old. Rheumatism troubled him, yet he painted with great enthusiasm. Vollard recalls him in his notes at work out of doors: he needed help to move about, and the brushes were tied to his fingers with string. The costume, then, is not decoration in the scene but the only theatrical thing in it – everything else is work.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. A matador’s suit is made of embroidery and silk, that is, of surfaces that break light rather than throwing it back evenly, and that is the hardest case for a print: the screen flattens the glitter into a single dull tone and the suit loses its weight. A hand-painted canvas leaves the paint denser in one place and thinner in another, so the light keeps travelling across the cloth and the costume stays cloth rather than becoming print.

In the room

The format is upright and the figure is close to life size, so the scene asks for distance and a clear wall: a living room, an entrance hall, a stairway or an office where you can step back a few paces. For an ordinary room we suggest 70 x 90 or 84 x 103 cm, the second being the measurement of the original. On a large wall 110 x 140 or 130 x 160 cm works. Below 50 x 60 cm the face and the embroidery on the suit run together, so we do not suggest smaller sizes for this portrait.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Ambroise Vollard Dressed as a Toreador arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: portrait of a man in a matador’s suit, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 40 x 50 cm to 150 x 180 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the painter was seventy-five at this canvas and rheumatism made the work hard – the brushes were tied to his fingers with string

See also:

• Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil
• Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey
• Jean Drawing