by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 2, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The church tower rises behind a leafless tree, but it does not command the whole view. Houses, shrubs, a pale track and a small figure occupy the same close-knit patch of Essoyes. Renoir painted this small canvas around 1900, according to the Christie’s catalogue for the exact work. [1] Its French title there is L’église à Essoyes. The old English route title, The Church at Essoyes, is a translation of the subject, not evidence of a separate painting.
The local image matches the auction reproduction: the large bare tree stands left of centre, branches cross the light tower, red roofs flank the church, and a tiny dark figure appears near the right-hand path. This visual match matters because Renoir painted more than one Essoyes landscape. The catalogue’s date, size and ownership history belong to this particular arrangement.
Contents
- The work at a glance
- Finding the church in the picture
- Branches, colour and movement
- Why Essoyes mattered to Renoir
- A small painting with a documented trail
- What makes this landscape distinct?
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Watch on YouTubeAt a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
- Catalogue titleL’église à Essoyes
- DatePainted in Essoyes circa 1900
- MediumOil on canvas
- Size25 × 30.6 cm
- Last documented statusPrivate collection; offered at Christie’s, New York, in 2022
- Catalogue referenceDauberville, vol. III, no. 1984, as cited by Christie’s
The Christie’s object record [1] is the source for these facts. It also states that the work is planned for inclusion in the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s Renoir digital catalogue raisonné. That prospective inclusion is a catalogue statement, not proof that the digital entry has already appeared. A current public owner is not established by the sale record, so the page does not name one.
Finding the church in the picture
At first the tree may be easier to see than the building named in the title. Its trunk divides into a busy spray of thin, reddish branches, some reaching beyond the painted top edge. Through them, Renoir shows the light-coloured upper church tower. Lower roofs and garden growth partly conceal the rest. The church is therefore a point of orientation within a village view, rather than an isolated architectural portrait.
Start at the red roof on the far left and follow the slope towards the central house. A low fence and dark vegetation break the ground into irregular patches. From there, the eye crosses a pale strip of path or open earth towards the small figure at the right. The tower sits higher and farther back, but the foreground tree repeatedly pulls attention forward. This shifting between near branches and distant masonry gives the compact picture more space than its dimensions suggest.
The tiny figure should be read carefully. The person gives scale to the buildings and path, yet the paint does not establish a name, occupation or destination. Renoir has not made this a narrative scene about a church service. The title identifies a landmark; the painting spends at least as much energy on its surroundings.
Branches, colour and movement
Warm strokes run through the tree, roofs and low shrubs. Blue in the sky reappears among the cooler marks in the foreground, while green and orange touch neighbouring forms. The colours prevent the church from being sealed off from the rest of the village. What appears stable in a photograph of a building becomes an interwoven set of surfaces in paint.
The branches are especially active. They interrupt the tower’s outline and make the viewer reconstruct the architecture from glimpses. On the right, Renoir leaves a wider passage of blue sky above the path. The two sides therefore feel different: densely screened around the church and more open towards the small walker. That reading comes from the visible arrangement; it does not require a claim about the weather or the precise season. Bare branches may suggest a cool part of the year, but the auction catalogue does not assign a month.
Christie’s calls attention to the picture’s short, varied strokes and strong shifts between warm and cool colour. Those are visible in the tree against the blue sky and in the ochre buildings behind the green-brown vegetation. The image has an energetic surface despite its quiet subject. It is more useful to ask how Renoir builds that surface than to assume he intended the church as a statement about religion. No source found for this canvas supports the old page’s claims about Christian symbolism or the artist’s beliefs.
Why Essoyes mattered to Renoir
Essoyes was the village where Aline Charigot, Renoir’s wife, grew up. The local tourism office [2] records that Renoir bought a house there in 1896 and returned with his family during the summers. The later studio in its garden was built in 1906. Since the painting is catalogued around 1900, the house belongs to its context; the purpose-built studio does not. It would be an error to describe this picture as painted in the 1906 studio.
The village setting also distinguishes this work from the public leisure of Renoir’s earlier Seine pictures. A church, neighbouring homes, gardens and a small path are ordinary features of a place he and his family knew. The view is not topographical evidence for every building’s exact appearance, because Renoir can select and compress what he paints. But the named village and the clearly pictured church place it within his repeated attention to local surroundings.
The Côte des Bar heritage walk [3] identifies the present Saint-Rémi church as the nineteenth-century replacement for an earlier Romanesque building. It says the older church was demolished in 1855 and the replacement was consecrated in 1865. Renoir’s circa-1900 view therefore cannot show the destroyed medieval church. The tower in the painting belongs to the village he visited, though the brushwork is too free to make the canvas an architectural survey.
A small painting with a documented trail
Christie’s lists Ambroise Vollard in the work’s early provenance, followed by Galerie Art-Mel and a Paris private collection by about 1954. It records inheritance within that family, then sales at Sotheby’s in 1997, 2006 and 2013, after which the painting passed through private collections. The 2022 lot page says the consignor acquired it from the preceding London private owner. These are documented waypoints, not a statement that every transfer from Renoir to Vollard is known.
The work’s later route is useful because generic titles such as “church” or “Essoyes” can attach to multiple village views. A chain of sale references, its 25 × 30.6 cm size and the exact image together provide a stronger identification than a title alone. Christie’s also cites a reproduction in Vollard’s 1918 Renoir publication and Dauberville catalogue no. 1984. Its notice says the Dauberville entry has an unspecified cataloguing error; without the precise correction, this page does not reproduce more detail from that entry than the lot record supports.
An auction catalogue is a dated account of the object at a particular sale. It does not prove the painting’s current whereabouts. Readers looking for the original should follow later collection or sale records rather than assume a private owner named in 2022 still holds it.
What makes this landscape distinct?
The church is visible but partially screened. The tree fills a surprisingly large share of the image; the path and figure lead out to the right; houses form a middle layer between them and the tower. Those choices give an everyday village view a measured rhythm of concealment and discovery. The title starts the search for a landmark, then the painting asks us to notice all the visual work around it.
Renoir’s other Essoyes subjects and his earlier landscapes can help place the work within a long career, but they should not be substituted for it. Even another image labelled L’église à Essoyes needs comparison of the tree, roofs, tower and path, plus date and measurements. For this route, the Christie’s image is the controlling match.
Renoir artworks directory
Questions about The Church at Essoyes
Christie’s catalogues this specific canvas as painted in Essoyes circa 1900. That is an approximate date, not a signed year.
The oil painting measures 25 × 30.6 cm according to the exact-object auction record.
It was offered from a private collection at Christie’s in 2022. The catalogue does not establish its current owner or display location.
The title names a village landmark. The available object evidence supports a landscape reading, but no documented statement for this canvas establishes a religious message.
No. The local heritage walk says the earlier Romanesque church was demolished in 1855 and its replacement consecrated in 1865, before Renoir painted this view.
Discussion
What do you notice when you return to The Church at Essoyes?
How do the bare branches change your view of the church tower?
Reader Insights
How do the bare branches change your view of the church tower?
Christie’s catalogues this exact village painting circa 1900, 25 × 30.6 cm.
Where does your eye go after it finds the tower behind the tree?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about Renoir’s Essoyes view.
References
- Christie’s, L’église à Essoyes, lot 810, 2022: exact image match, title, date, medium, dimensions, provenance and literature View source.
- Côte des Bar tourism office, Renoir house and studio: family and local chronology View source.
- Côte des Bar, Essoyes heritage walk: Saint-Rémi church history View source.
- Lead image: inherited site image, owner-declared public domain; composition visually matches the Christie’s lot reproduction.
