Dance at Bougival / Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Renoir is perhaps the only painter", said Octave Mirbeau, "who never produced a sad painting." But a close look at the painting 'Dance at Bougival' has a slightly different story to tell. Pictured in this painting is Marie Clementine, who later changed her name to Suzanne Valadon. According to Fosca, she had been a dressmaker before becoming an acrobat, when she injured herself and started posing for artists. Based on what authors have written about Renoir and his feelings about women, we can hypothesize that the reason for Suzanne’s unhappiness in the painting is because Renoir would not have liked her as a person. Suzanne was so wild that he probably didn’t feel comfortable painting her in such an intimate activity as dancing. According to Ann Dumas, Renoir was “a nervous, restless man with contradictory ideas about almost everything, including women”. He believed that the woman’s place was in the home being practical and domestic, or out of the home sitting for him as a model. Thus, since Suzanne was so active dancing and having a career as an acrobat, he would not have liked her role in society. From his dislike for her, Renoir portrays Suzanne unhappily. Januszczak noticed this straying from happiness and writes about her eyes as he did for the women’s eyes in Le Moulin de la Galette: “But she…ah, she is a typical Renoir girl, and so instead of throwing herself into the dance with abandon, she gazes into infinity. Eyes that should be gay are full of thought”. Januszczak recognizes that her eyes do not engage with her partner, yet he does not notice the more prominent feature that shows her uneasiness: her mouth. Her eyes only seem to be looking away from her partner, but her lips actually show she is uncomfortable. They droop, when they should have been smiling, enjoying the dance. Her mouth shows unhappiness, while her eyes only show diversion. This seems to point to the fact that Renoir was uncomfortable with Suzanne. He was uneasy about her as a person, and thus reflected it in her discontent, through her frowning mouth.