On this day: Impressionist Painter Pierre-Augute Renoir was born, le 25 Février 1841

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One of the defining painters on the Impressionist movement (though he later distanced himself from it), Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne on le 25 février 1841 to a working-class family. Renoir is noted for his radiant, intimate paintings, particularly of the female nude. Recognized by critics as one of the greatest and most independent painters of his period, Renoir is noted for the harmony of his lines, the brilliance of his color, and the intimate charm of his wide variety of subjects. Unlike other Impressionists he was as much interested in painting the single human figure or family group portraits as he was in landscapes; unlike them, too, he did not subordinate composition and plasticity of form to attempts at rendering the effect of light.

Limoges, a city in central south-western France, is the préfecture of the département de Haute-Vienne , and the administrative capital of the Limousin région. Limoges is known worldwide for its medieval enamels ('Limoges enamels') on copper, for its XIX ème siecle porcelain ('Limoges porcelain') and for its oak barrels (Limousin oak), which are used for ageing Cognac and wine.

Renoir's father, a tailor who had seven children, moved with his family to Paris about 1845. Young Renoir demonstrated his gift at an early age. Quickly recognizing his talent, his parents apprenticed him, at age 13, to work in a porcelain factory, where he learned to decorate plates with bouquets of flowers. Shortly after that, he was painting fans and then cloth panels representing religious themes for missionaries to hang in their churches. His skill and the great pleasure he took in his work soon convinced him he should study painting in earnest. Having saved a little money, he decided, in 1862, to take evening courses in drawing and anatomy at l'École des Beaux-Arts as well as painting lessons at the studio of Charles Gleyre, a Swiss painter who had been a student of the XIX ème siecle Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Although the academic style of his teacher did not suit Renoir, he nevertheless accepted its discipline in order to acquire the elementary skills needed to become a painter.

Renoir felt a much greater affinity with three students who entered the studio a few months later: Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, and Frédéric Bazille. All four students dreamed of an art that was closer to life and free from past traditions. The shared ideals of the four young men quickly led to a strong friendship, and Renoir's early works include Portrait of the Painter Bazille (1867), The Painter Sisley and His Wife (1868), and Monet Painting in His Garden (1873). At the same time in another workshop at the Académie Suisse, the young artists Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro were preoccupied with the same problems as Renoir and his friends. With Bazille as the intermediary, the two groups met frequently.

Lise, the Bohemian, 1868

Circumstances encouraged Renoir to attempt a new freedom and experimentation in his style. The convention of the time was that a painting, even a landscape, had to be executed in the studio. In the spring of 1864, however, Gleyre's four students moved temporarily to Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau (which surrounds the famous château), where the artists devoted themselves to painting directly from nature. The Fontainebleau forest had earlier attracted other artists, among them Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, who insisted that art represent the reality of everyday life, even though they had not yet completely renounced the constraints imposed by traditional training. In 1863 Édouard Manet took a much bolder step: his picture Déjeuner sur l'herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”) provoked a violent scandal because its subject and technique stressed the observation of modern reality over the repetition of a traditional ideal. Manet's daring made him, in the eyes of these young artists, the leader of a new movement.

Conditions were ripe for the birth of a new pictorial language, and Impressionism, bursting upon the scene, attracted notoriety with the first Impressionist exposition of 1874, held independently of the official Salon. It took 10 years for the movement to acquire its definitive form, its independent vision, and its unique perceptiveness. But one can point to 1874 as the year of departure for the movement that subsequently spawned modern art.

A Young Girl with Daises/Jeune fille avec marguerites

Renoir's work is a perfect illustration of this new approach in thought and technique. By using small, multicoloured strokes, he evoked the vibration of the atmosphere, the sparkling effect of foliage, and especially the luminosity of a young woman's skin in the outdoors. Renoir and his companions stubbornly strove to produce light-suffused paintings from which black was excluded, but their pursuits led to many disappointments: their paintings, so divergent from traditional formulas, were frequently rejected by the juries of the Salon and were extremely difficult to sell. Despite the continuing criticism, some of the Impressionists were making themselves known, as much among art critics as among the lay public. Renoir, because of his fascination with the human figure, was distinctive among the others, who were more interested in landscape. Thus, he obtained several orders for portraits and was introduced, thanks to the publisher Georges Charpentier, to upper-middle-class society, from whom he obtained commissions for portraits, most notably of women and children.

Renoir mastered the ability to convey his immediate visual impressions, and his paintings showed great vitality, emphasizing the pleasures of life despite the financial worries that troubled him. Several of his masterpieces date from this period: La Loge (1874; “The Theatre Box”), Le Moulin de la galette (1876), The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), and Mme Charpentier and Her Children (1878). Charpentier organized a personal exposition for the works of Renoir in 1879 in the gallery La Vie Moderne.

The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

In 1881 and 1882 Renoir made several trips to Algeria, Italy, and Provence, and these eventually had a considerable effect on his art and on his life. He became convinced that the systematic use of the Impressionistic technique was no longer sufficient for him and that small brushstrokes of contrasting colours placed side by side did not allow him to convey the satiny effects of the skin. He also discovered that black did not deserve the opprobrium given to it by his comrades and that, in certain cases, it had a striking effect and gave a great intensity to the other colours. During his journey to Italy, he discovered Raphael and the hallmarks of classicism: the beauty of drawing, the purity of a clear line to define a form, and the expressive force of smooth painting when used to enhance the suppleness and modeling of a body. At this same time, he happened to read "Il libro dell'arte" (1437; A Treatise on Painting) by Cennino Cennini, which reinforced his new ideas. All of these revelations were so powerful and unexpected that they provoked a crisis, and he was tempted to break with Impressionism, which he had already begun to doubt. He felt that until now he had been mistaken in pursuing the ephemeral in art.

Most of his works executed from 1883 to 1884 on are so marked by a new discipline that art historians have grouped them under the title the “Ingres” period (to signify their vague similarity to the technique of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres) or the “harsh,” or “dry,” period. Renoir's experiments with Impressionism were not wasted, however, because he retained a luminous palette. Nevertheless, in paintings from this period, such as The Umbrellas (c. 1883) and many depictions of bathers, Renoir emphasized volume, form, contours, and line rather than color and brushstroke.

His strong reaction against Impressionism continued until about 1890. During these years he made several trips to southern France: Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, and Martigues. The nature of this sunlit region gave greater encouragement to his separation from Impressionism, which to him was associated with the landscapes of the valley of la Seine. Southern France offered him scenes bursting with colour and sensuality. At the same time, the seemingly joyous spontaneity of nature gave him the desire to depart from his newfound adherence to the dictates of classicism. While in southern France, he recovered the instinctive freshness of his art; he painted women at their bath with the same healthful bloom he would give to bouquets of flowers.

Les grandes baignuesses, 1887

Renoir was married in 1890 to Aline Charigot (some sources give the year as 1881), and the exposition that was organized for him in 1892 by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was a great success. Renoir's future was assured, and his work of that period reflected his new security and also his confidence in the future.

Les jeunes filles au piano, 1892

Renoir had his first attack of rheumatism in 1894, and, as the attacks became more and more frequent, he spent more and more time in southern France, where the climate was better for his health. About 1899 he sought refuge in the small village of Cagnes; in 1907 he settled there permanently, buying the estate of Les Collettes, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1910 he was no longer able to walk. Although his infirmity became more and more constraining, Renoir never ceased to paint; when his fingers were no longer supple, he continued by binding his paintbrush to his hand.

In spite of his physical decline, Renoir's paintings during this period still embodied a cheerful attitude toward life. His themes became more personal and intimate, focusing on portraits of his wife, his children, and Gabrielle, his maid, who often also posed for his nude paintings. His still lifes were composed of flowers and fruits from his own garden, and the landscapes were those that surrounded him. The nudes, especially, reflect the serenity that he found in his work. Examples of this period include "The Artist's Family" (1896) and "Sleeping Bather" (1897). He attempted to embody his admiration for the female form in sculpture, with the assistance of young Richard Guino. Since Renoir was no longer able to do sculpture himself, Guino became, about 1913, the skillful instrument who willingly followed his directions. He yielded before the personality of Renoir and succeeded so well that the works have all the qualities of Renoir's style.

Renoir's wife died in 1915 after having returned from Gérardmer, where she had gone to see their son Jean, who had been seriously wounded in the war, and who would go on to become an important filmmaker. Renoir survived his wife by four years. Several months before his death, he was able to go to Paris to see his "Portrait of Mme Georges Charpentier" (1876–77), which had been recently acquired by the state. On that occasion, several friends wheeled him for the last time through le Louvre to view the masterpieces that he had venerated throughout his life.

Renoir died on le 3 décembre 1919 at his home in Cagnes.

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"One of Renoir's early portraits, A Girl with a Watering Can, has all the tender charm of its subject, delicately unemphasized, not sentimentalized, but clearly relished. Renoir stoops down to the child's height so that we look at her world from her own altitude. This, he hints, is the world that the little one sees - not the actual garden that adults see today, but the nostalgic garden that they remember from their childhood. The child is sweetly aware of her central importance. Solid little girl though she is, she presents herself with the fragile charm of the flowers. Her sturdy little feet in their sensible boots are somehow planted in the garden, and the lace of her dress has a floral rightness; she also is decorative. With the greatest skill, Renoir shows the child, not amid the actual flowers and lawns, but on the path. It leads away, out of the picture, into the unknown future when she will longer be part of the garden but an onlooker, an adult, who will enjoy only her memories of the present now depicted."
- Text from "Sister Wendy's Story of Painting", by Wendy Beckett

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