Renoir Posters & Prints
Pierre-Auguste Renoir French: ; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 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.
He was the father of actor Pierre Renoir (1885–1952), filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894–1979) and ceramic artist Claude Renoir (1901–1969). He was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir (1913–1993), son of Pierre.
Renoir was the son of craftsmen and lived his early years in proletarian neighborhoods where he worked as a porcelain decorator and a fan painter. Later he was able to access the workshop of the painter Gilbert and then Gleyre, where he met Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley, with whom he later shared his house in Paris.
His first interests as a painter leaned towards the Barbizon school and, consequently, towards painting in the open air. During the hectic days of the Commune, he painted with Monet on the banks of the Seine. In 1873 he finished Riders in the Forest of Bologna, excluded from the official Hall and exhibited in the Rejected Hall. Durand-Ruel became interested in his work and in 1874 he participated in the first Impressionist exhibition, in the studios of the photographer Nadar.
There he exhibited, among other works, The Box (1874, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London). It is a large canvas where he represents Niní López and her brother with a technique of loose brushstrokes fused together, with imprecise and poorly defined contours.
Poster Vintage Decoration
The composition is characterized by the ascending and sinuous rhythms of her black dress and those of his jacket, as well as pointing out the importance of the heads: hers expresses serenity and attention, while his hides his gaze behind the binoculars.
In 1876, the second exhibition of the Impressionist group was held, in which Renoir participated with one of his best-known works, The Moulin de la Galette (1876, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which includes the moments of a dance in the open air in a Parisian terrace.
If we compare it with the work by Manet Concert at the Tuileries (1860, National Gallery, London), with a similar theme and composition, it presents, like the latter, a frame interrupted by the edges of the format, a resource that produces the impression that the scene it follows and expands beyond the very limits of the canvas.
Compared to the work of Manet, who painted it in a display of imprecise and indefinite brushstrokes, Renoir's painting liberates the painting even more, with a succession of sparkling spots that seem to slide on the canvas to the rhythm of music or movements. of the trees that partially let in the light that illuminates the scene.
Renoir Canvas Wall Arts
Evolution of Renoir's style
In 1878, Renoir distanced himself from the Impressionist group and sought success in the official salons. The abandonment of the Impressionist principles was accentuated when, from 1881, he traveled extensively (Normandy, Algiers, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Sicily) they arouse his admiration for a certain classical idea of beauty (Pompeian painting, Ingres, Raphael Sanzio). This led him to question the value of the spontaneity of his earlier technique, progressively moving away from atmospheric effects in search of a more defined painting.
Noteworthy works from this period reflect moments of contemporary Parisian life, such as the painting Madame Charpentier and her children (1878, Metropolitan Museum, Wolf Foundation, New York), which was exhibited at the 1879 Salon, where it received the approval of the public and critics.
Renoir and Female Painting
The theme of women, for which the artist clearly showed, throughout his life, a great interest, generally adopts a treatment of great consistency and classical resonances. The series of bathers stands out -Seated Bather drying her leg (1895, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris), Seated Bather (1914, Art Institute, Chicago), or Bathers (1918-1919, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)- that constitute the maximum exponent of feminine beauty, executed with a warm and enveloping technique.
In these works, the brushstrokes do not move in multiple directions, as observed in El moulin de la Galette, but are lengthened by the insistent application of wet oil diluted in linseed oil and turpentine.
Evolution of Renoir's style
In 1878, Renoir distanced himself from the Impressionist group and sought success in the official salons. The abandonment of the Impressionist principles was accentuated when, from 1881, he traveled extensively (Normandy, Algiers, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Sicily) they arouse his admiration for a certain classical idea of beauty (Pompeian painting, Ingres, Raphael Sanzio). This led him to question the value of the spontaneity of his earlier technique, progressively moving away from atmospheric effects in search of a more defined painting.
Noteworthy works from this period reflect moments of contemporary Parisian life, such as the painting Madame Charpentier and her children (1878, Metropolitan Museum, Wolf Foundation, New York), which was exhibited at the 1879 Salon, where it received the approval of the public and critics.
Renoir and Female Painting
The theme of women, for which the artist clearly showed, throughout his life, a great interest, generally adopts a treatment of great consistency and classical resonances. The series of bathers stands out -Seated Bather drying her leg (1895, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris), Seated Bather (1914, Art Institute, Chicago), or Bathers (1918-1919, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)- that constitute the maximum exponent of feminine beauty, executed with a warm and enveloping technique.
In these works, the brushstrokes do not move in multiple directions, as observed in El moulin de la Galette, but are lengthened by the insistent application of wet oil diluted in linseed oil and turpentine.
Renoir and the irregular shapes of Nature
In 1884 he wrote a proposal to found the Irregular Society, which associated beauty with the organic and irregular forms of nature and rejected the mechanical and industrialized world, as John Ruskin and William Morris had done years before, but whose sensuality he distanced himself from their religiosity.
Sometimes I talk like the peasants in the south. They say they are unlucky. I ask them if they are sick and they say no. So they are lucky; they have a little money, so if they have a bad harvest they don't go hungry. They can eat, they can sleep, and they have a job that allows them to be outside in the sunlight. What more could they want? They are the happiest of men and they don't even know it. After a few more years, I'm going to abandon the brushes and dedicate myself to living in the sun. Nothing more."
Renoir's economic success
Renoir's financial hardship ended with the success of the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in New York. In 1892 he held an anthological exhibition in the Durand-Ruel salons. Two years later his son Jean (the filmmaker Jean Renoir) was born, and Gabrielle Renard, his wife Aline's cousin, entered the painter's house at sixteen to help with the housework, although she ended up becoming his favorite model. Jean Renoir wrote: "The spirit inherent in the boys and girls, the creatures and the trees, inhabitants of the world he created, contained as much purity as Gabrielle's naked body. And finally, Renoir revealed his own being through this nakedness."
The end stage
From that moment successes followed one another. However, neither his arthritis, which led him to settle in Provence in search of a warmer climate (he underwent surgery in 1910 on both knees, one hand and one foot), nor the enlistment of his sons Pierre and Jean during the World War I, nor even the death of his wife in 1915, managed to dampen his enthusiasm for painting.
Where did the painter Renoir die?
The painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir bought an estate in 1903, in Cagnes-sur-Mer (France) on Les Collettes hill where he lived until his death in 1919.
