Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 –
December 3, 1919) was a French artist who painted
in the Impressionism|impressionist style.

==The art of Renoir==
Renoir's paintings show vibrant light and color,
and harmony of lines. Unlike many
Impressionism|impressionists who focused on
landscapes, he painted not only landscapes, but
people in intimate and candid compositions —
sometimes applying paint with a palette knife
rather than a brush. Characteristic of
impressionism style, Renoir painted not the
details of a scene, but instead his figures softly
fuse with one another and the surroundings. In his
late 1880s paintings the figures and scenery look
more distinct from one another, but the paintings
of his final years again display the softness.

His initial paintings show the influence of the
artistry of Eugène Delacroix, and of his friend
Claude Monet with whom he developed the
Impressionism|impressionist style. The influence
of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet and Camille
Corot is also seen in his work.

In the late 1860s, obsessed with painting light
and water, he and Monet discovered that the color
of shadows is not brown or black, but the
reflected color of the objects surrounding them.

One of the best known Impressionism|impressionist
works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la
Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette), which
depicts an open-air scene, jammed with people, of
a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre
close to where he lived.

A prolific painter, he made several thousand
paintings.

The warm sensuality of Renoir's painting made his
work some the best known and frequently reproduced
work in the history of art.

==Biography==

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 talent led to him painting
designs on china. He worked painting hangings for
overseas missionaries, and painting on fans before
he enrolled in art school. During those 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, Frederic
Bazille and Claude Monet. At times during the
1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paints.

Although Renoir first exhibited paintings in 1864,
recognition did not come for another 10 years due,
in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian
War. 

During the Paris Commune in 1871, while he painted
by the Seine River, a Commune group thought he was
spying and they were about to throw him in the
river when a Commune leader, Raoul Rigault,
recognized Renoir as the man who protected him on
an earlier occasion.



In the mid-1870s, he experienced his first acclaim
his work hung in the first impressionist
exhibition (1874). 

While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir
engaged in an affair with his model
(person)|model, Suzanne Valadon, who became one of
the leading female artists of the day. Later, he
married Aline Victorine Charigot, and they had
three sons, one of whom, Jean Renoir, became a
filmmaker. After marrying his work changed. He
became as interested in painting people as he was
in painting landscapes.

In 1881 he traveled to Algeria, a country he
associated with Eugène Delacroix, then to Madrid,
Spain to see the work of Diego Velázquez, also to
Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence,
and the paintings of Raffaello Santi|Raphael in
Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met composer
Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily.
Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just 35
minutes.

Renoir painted even during the last 20 years of
his life when arthritis severely hampered his
movement, and he was wheelchair-bound. In 1907, he
moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a
farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean
Sea|Mediterranean coast. There, he painted by
strapping a brush to his arm, and created
sculptures by directing an assistant who worked
the clay.

In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his
paintings hanging with the old masters.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir died in the village of
Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-CĂ´te d'Azur, on
December 3, 1919.

Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than
United States dollar|$70 million.  Bal
au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre sold for
United States dollar|$78.1 million in 1990.

== Selected works==
*Mademoiselle Romaine Lacaux (1864)
*La Promenade (1870)
*Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873)
*La Loge (1874) 
*Woman with Fan (1875) 
*The Swing (1875)
*Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers'
Lunch) (1875)
*Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre (1876)
*Madame Charpentier and Her Children (1878)
*Jeanne Samary (1879) 
*Acrobats at the Circus Fernando (1879)
*On the Terrace (1881)
*Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
*The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1881)
*Blonde Bather (1881)
*By the Seashore (1883)
*Umbrellas (1883)
*Dance at Bougival (1883)

*Bathers (1887)
*In the Meadow  (1890)
*The Apple Sellers (1890)
*Two Girls at the Piano (1892)
*Vase of Chrysanthemums  (1895)
*Coco (1905)
*The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes (1908-1914)
*The Concert (1918)

==Related link==
Gabrielle Renard - Renoir family's nanny

==External Links==
Commons|Pierre-Auguste Renoir
wikiquotepar|Pierre Auguste Renoir
*http://www.biography.com/impressionists/artists_r
enoir.html Renoir at biography.com
*http://www.abcgallery.com/R/renoir/renoir.html
Renoir at Olga's Gallery
*http://www.wingett.com/painters/renoir-pierre-aug
uste/ Renoir at Galerie Pelar