Pierre-Auguste Renoir (
February 25,
1841–
December 3,
1919) was a French
artist who was a leading
painter in the development of the
Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from
Rubens to
Watteau".
Biography
Youth
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in
Limoges,
Haute-Vienne,
France, the child of a
working class family. As a boy, he worked in a
porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. During those early years, he often visited the
Louvre to study the
French master painters.
In 1862 he began studying art under
Charles Gleyre in
Paris. There he met
Alfred Sisley,
Frédéric Bazille, and
Claude Monet. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the
Paris Salon in 1864, recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the
Franco-Prussian War.
During the
Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted on the banks of the
Seine River, some members of a commune group thought he was a spy, and were about to throw him into the river when a commune leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion.
In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Coeur and his family ended,
[Wadley, page 15.] and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but a generous welcome to stay on their property near
Fontainebleau and its scenic
forest.
This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.
Maturity
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with
Durand-Ruel in London.
The Swing (La Balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
In 1881, he traveled to
Algeria, a country he associated with
Eugène Delacroix, then to
Madrid, to see the work of
Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to
Italy to see
Titian's masterpieces in
Florence and the paintings of
Raphael in
Rome. On
January 15,
1882 Renoir met the composer
Richard Wagner at his home in
Palermo,
Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system.
[Wadley, page 25.]In 1883, he spent the summer in
Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in
Saint Martin's, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of
the Channel Islands in the
English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a
model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (
The Bathers, 1885–87;
Dance at Bougival, 1883) and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when
Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the "French Impressionist Paintings" catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married
Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for
Les Déjeuner des canotiers (
Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885.
After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin
Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom,
Jean, became a
filmmaker of note and another,
Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Girls at the Piano, 1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Later years
Around 1892, Renoir developed
rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the
Mediterranean coast. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life, even when arthritis severely limited his movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and
ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to adapt his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand.
The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation.
During this period he created
sculptures by cooperating with a young artist,
Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of
Cagnes-sur-Mer,
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
Artworks
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.
His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of
Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of
Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of
Gustave Courbet and
Édouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired
Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master
François Boucher.
A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is
Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings.
In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water
en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend
Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (
La Grenouillère, 1869).
One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876
Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived.
thumb|left|250px|On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as
The Bathers, which was created during 1884–87. It was a trip to
Italy in 1881, when he saw works by
Raphael and other
Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "
Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures.
After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are
Girls at the Piano, 1892, and
Grandes Baigneuses, 1918–19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes.
A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his works —181 paintings in all— is at the
Barnes Foundation, near
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Posthumous prints
In 1919,
Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir,
La Vie et Oeuvre de Pierre Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally
etchings with hand applied
watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed “Vollard” in the lower margin. They are unnumbered, undated and not signed in pencil.
Posthumous sales
Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than
$70 million.
Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for
$78.1 million in 1990.
See also
Gallery
Renoir and the nude
Selected works
- Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
- Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
- Nude in the Sunlight (1876)
- Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
- Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) (1879)
- Two Women with Umbrellas (1879)
- The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
- Children on the Sea Shore in Guernsey (1883)
- The Bay of Moulin Huet Seen Through the Trees (1883)
- The Bather (After the Bath) (1888)
- Young Girl with Daisies (1889)
- Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
- Vase of Chrysanthemums (1895)
- The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908–1914)
Bibliography
