The French painter Pierre Auguste Renoir,
b. Limoges, France, Feb. 25, 1841, d. Dec. 17, 1919, was one of the founders of impressionism.
"Le Moulin de la Galette"
by Pierre Auguste Renoir
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Within the impressionist group his work stands out as the most traditional in outlook and
technique, as well as the most sensual.
At the age of 13 he began painting flowers
on dishware at a porcelain factory and later painted fans and screens. In 1862 he entered
the studio of Charles Gleyre (1808-74) and became friends with Claude Monet and Alfred
Sisley, who shared his inclination to take up painting outdoors. By the time (1869) that he
and Monet worked together at La Grenouillere, on the Seine, Renoir had developed a delicate
touch and vibrant brushwork that were distinctly his own.
In the early 1870s, Renoir and his friends
joined with other avant-garde artists to form a loose-knit artistic circle now known as the
impressionist movement. He participated in the first impressionist exhibition (1874) and
throughout the 1870s remained committed to impressionist ideals. Renoir, however, continued
to produce paintings of a more traditional sort, including portraits and scenes of leisure
enjoyment, such as Le Moulin de la Galette (1876; Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
"Alphonsine Fournaise at the Grenouillère"
by Pierre Auguste Renoir
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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In his portraits and society paintings, Renoir masterfully rendered the shimmering interplay
of light and color on surfaces, the prime goal of impressionism, but also kept an underlying
sensuality.
Renoir's growing dissatisfaction with the
formal restrictions of pure impressionism intensified during a visit (1881-82) to Algiers and
Italy. In response, he made his figures larger and placed them closer to the picture-plane,
with a setting treated like a simple backdrop. This friezelike treatment, best exemplified in
his Dance at Bougival (1883; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), led to his so-called "harsh manner"
of the mid-1880s, in which he purified his contours and used frozen, static poses.
Beginning in the 1890s, Renoir concentrated
almost exclusively on the female figure, using warmer flesh tones, more exotic colors, and a
tapestried treatment of landscape. In 1905 he settled at Cagnes near Nice; its sun-drenched
climate is reflected in the intense colors of his later works. In his last years (after 1913),
he also executed sculpture with the aid of an Italian assistant.
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Renoir Quotations:
"In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter
how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to
nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat."
(1)
"I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black."
(2)
"The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away.
It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which
he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion."
(3)
"If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but
momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous."
(4)
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