Birth Year : 1841
Death Year : 1919
Country : France
Pierre Auguste Renoir, the genius and traditionalist of the Impressionist
movement, and a follower in the grand line of Titian, Tintoretto,
Rubens, Fragonard,
Delacroix, Courbet, Manet,
and Ingres, was born in
Limoges, the son of a tailor. Renoir began his career by painting porcelain
plates, fans, and window blinds, before entering the Académie Gleyre
in 1862. His meeting with Monet, Sisley,
and Bazille and their removal
to Fountainbleau to paint from nature brought him into the heart of the
Impressionist movement, although his paintings before 1870 were in the
classical tradition and show the influences of Courbet,
Corot, Delacroix,
and Manet. Between 1870 and 1880, Renoir
was a pure Impressionist, painting with the characteristic touches of broken
color and in exquisite hues. Unlike his companions, he preferred figure
painting to landscapes and created portraits and scenes of social life
in a manner that is at once joyously alive, tender, and sensuous. By 1880,
Renoir felt that he could go no further as an Impressionist, and in 1881
he went to Italy, staying at first in Venice, next in Rome where he studied
Raphael's frescoes, and finally in Naples
and Pompeii. Upon his return to France, Renoir decided that he knew nothing
about drawing or the rendering of form and began to copy the works of Ingres
and Renaissance bas-reliefs. He also spent considerable time with Cezanne.
His own work took on an acid tone, a hard line, a smooth flat texture,
and an attention to form rather than color-a manner he himself called aigre
(sour or acid). From this period came the great series of "Bathers" (ca.
1895). His final style, derived from previous experiments, combines line
and color, volume and light, a delight in plastic values that derives in
part from the paganism of the ancient Greeks, and an optimistic outlook
on life. His paintings glorify women. He loved their beauty and their gentleness,
their laughter and their gravity, their tenderness and their coquetry.
This same understanding applies to his paintings of children whom he painted
with an eye for their naturalness and simplicity. Renoir's love of painting
was so great, that even in his final years, confined to bed with brushes
bound to his crippled, arthritic wrists, he produced Olympian canvases
with resonant colors.
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Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Sur
la Terrace
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Bal
a Bougival
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Two
Girls at the Piano
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Lady
at the Piano
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Le
Dejeuner des Canotiers
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