Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

In December 1888, Renoir began to suffer from rheumatism, which would cripple his hands. in 1898 after a serious attack of the disease his right arm was paralyzed. From then on he painted with a brush strapped to his wrist enduring chronic pain. In 1907 (by which time he was world-famous), he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. In 1912, the rheumatism eventually confined him to a wheelchair, but he continued to paint until the end of his life, and in his last years he also took up sculpture, directing assistants (usually Richard Guino, a pupil of Maillol) to act as his hands. Renoir also utilized a moving canvas or picture roll to facilitate painting large works with his limited joint mobility.

In 1919, not long before his death, he finished, in great pain, his large-scale composition The Great Bathers (The Nymphs). Also in 1919, he paid a visit to the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters.

Renoir died in Cagnes on 3 December 1919 and was buried in Essoyes, next to Aline.

Renoir, who had made several thousand paintings in his lifetime, is perhaps the best-loved of all the Impressionists, for his subjects, pretty children, flowers, beautiful scenes and above all, lovely women, had instant appeal. Within the impressionist group his work stands out as the most traditional in outlook and technique, as well as the most sensual. 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.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, and brought up in Paris where his father, a tailor with a large family, settled in 1845. From the age of thirteen he worked as an apprentice painter, painting flowers on porcelain plates and gaining experience with the light, fresh colours that were to distinguish his Impressionist work.

He also learned the importance of good craftsmanship and this early apprenticeship left a certain trace on his art, which was always decorative in spite of its later realism. After machines for colouring ceramics had been introduced, he had to switch to decorating fans and screens. Having saved some money, in 1862 Renoir entered the Atelier Gleyre and there made friends with Monet, Sisley and Bazille. Some time later he also met Pissarro and Cézanne.

He painted with his friends in the Barbizon district and became a leading member of the group of Impressionists who met at the Café Guerbois. Like Monet, Renoir endured much hardship early in his career and at times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. His relationship with Monet was particularly close at this time, and their paintings of the beauty spot called La Grenouillère, done in 1869, are regarded as the classic early statements of the Impressionist style.

Through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the colour of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected colour of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes of popular river resorts and views of a bustling Paris. Renoir was by nature more solid than Monet, and while Monet fixed his attentions on the ever-changing patterns of nature, Renoir was particularly entranced by people and often painted friends and lovers.

Renoir first exhibited at the Salon in 1864. After that the jury rejected his works and only in 1867 accepted Lise, portrait of his model and lover Lise Trehot. In 1867, he and Monet lived at Bazille’s house and in 1868-1870, he shared a studio with Bazille in Paris. There Renoir painted Bazzile working at his easel.

It was in the 1870s, that Renoir’s Impressionism style reached its peak. He worked at Argenteuil and in Paris. He participated in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882 and was a founding member of the review L’Impressionniste (1877), where he published his article on the principles of contemporary art.

Renoir achieved recognition earlier than his friends and in the late 1870s and was freed from financial worries after the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel began buying his work regularly in 1881. In 1879-80, he sent several portraits to the official Salon, among them Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary and Portrait of Mme Charpentier and Her Children.

While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir engaged in an affair with his model, Suzanne Valadon, who became one of the leading female artists of the day. In 1880, he met Aline Victorine Charigot, a common woman, whom he married in 1890. They had three sons, Pierre, Jean, who would become an important film director, and Claude, called “Coco”. After his marriage he was to paint many scenes of his children and their nurse.

In the same year, Renoir broke his right arm and for some time painted with his left hand. In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, later to Italy, where he was impressed by Raphael and the Pompeii frescoes. The Luncheon of the Boating Party, painted during this period, is certainly one of Renoir’s finest canvasses.

This visit to Italy inspired him to seek a greater sense of solidarity in his work and in the 1880s, he abandoned Impressionism for what is often called the “dry style”.

The change in attitude is seen in The Umbrellas, which was evidently begun before the visit to Italy and finished afterwards; the two little girls on the right were painted with the feathery brush-strokes characteristic of his Impressionist manner, but the figures on the left were done in a crisper and drier style, with duller colouring.

After a period of experimentation with what he called his `manière aigre' (harsh or sour manner) in the mid 1880s, he began a search for solid form and stable composition, which led him back to the masters of the Renaissance. He worked more carefully and meticulously and his colours became cooler and smoother. However, he later returned to the hot rich colours and free brushwork of his earlier days and he developed a softer and more supple kind of handling, a style, which he continued to develop to the end of his life. At the same time he turned from contemporary themes to more timeless subjects, particularly nudes, bathing in tne sunlight, but also pictures of young girls in unspecific settings. As his style became grander and simpler he also took up mythological subjects like "The Judgement of Paris", and the female type he preferred became more mature and ample.

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