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Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) View Pierre Auguste Renoir's Art Prints French painter born in Limoges, moved to Paris in 1845. He trained and worked with great facility as a porcelain painter (1856-9). With his earnings he entered the École des Beaux-Arts (1862-4) and became a pupil of Gleyre with Monet, Bazille and Sisley. Working with them in Paris and during summers at Fontainebleau, he emerged as one of the most naturally gifted of the future impressionists. He exhibited in 4 of the 8 Impressionist exhibitions. The character of Impressionism emerged from the paintings of Monet and Renoir between 1867 and 1870. Mutually inspired, they painted directly from the subject (poppyfields, figures under trees, riverscapes) and to retain the momentariness of nature's changing appearance, developed a technique of broadly painted broken brush-strokes. The living immediacy of their landscapes was further emphasized by their empirical use of complementary colour in shadows, clear scintillating colour in Monet, more sensitive subtle relationships in Renoir, e.g. Lise (1867). The difference between them is evident in their paintings of La Grenouilère painted side by side in 1869, Monet's in aggressive clean strokes of fresh blue and ochre, Renoir's in soft feathery areas of muted green, pink and violet. The climax of Renoir's important contribution to Impressionism is in, e.g. The Swing and Moulin de la Galette (both 1876) in which gay Paris life flickers under a patchwork of mottled light. Right through his career, Renoir's work never reveals the introspective seriousness of Monet or Cézanne (he shocked Gleyre by saying 'if painting were not a pleasure to me I should certainly not do it') and unlike Courbet, Pissarro or Zola (of whom Renoir said 'he thinks he has portrayed the people by saying that they stink') never dwelt on any but the pleasing aspects of life. His lack of intellectual seriousness led to a disturbing fluctuation in his early work from the pure Impressionism (1869-76), to Salon-conscious academicism, e.g, Diana (1867) and a literary anecdotal element present in La loge (1874). The constants in his work are his superb touch and his unfailing colour sense. In the late 1870s, he scored a great Salon success with works like the sweet and charming Mme Charpentier and Daughters (1878), but with the end of his Impressionist phase he felt uncertain. Such paintings as Dance at Bougival (1883) and Les Parapluies (c.1883) show him attempting to organize his forms with a more sculptural strength. The major work of this 'manière aigre' was the Grandes Baigneuses (1844-7): the figures very tightly drawn and modelled against the softness of the landscape. The classical character of this period reflects his visit to Italy in 1881 and his current admiration for Raphael, Ingres and French Renaissance sculpture. His later works are at once more freely painted and strongly coloured (oppressively hot reds and oranges), but retain this sense of monumentality, e.g. Seated Bather, (1914). The transition to sculpture in his last years was almost predictable. The bronze Venus Victrix (1914) is a typical example. View Pierre Auguste Renoir's Art Prints

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