Pierre-Auguste Renoir - French Impressionist

Renoir was born in Limoges, France, but grew up in Paris, in a happy family environment. He showed talent at an early age, so his parents placed him as an apprentice in a porcelain factory where he painted delicate flowers and profiles of Marie-Antoinette on dishware.

In 1862, Renoir began studying art formally, and it was during his studies that he met Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. The emphasis of his classes was on painting and drawing outdoors – considered revolutionary in those days - and Renoir and Monet spent a lot of time painting the river Seine. The sailing boats, regattas, and popular cafes that lined the river banks in those days became their favorite setting. They painted the play of light on water, rendered in quick brush strokes, and soon both artists were deeply involved in developing the color theories that are now considered to the basis of Impressionism.

After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Renoir and his friends formed the Impressionist School. They drew their inspiration from nature and their surroundings, discarded the dominant stiffness and somber colors of European art and adopted instead a style distinguished by its bright colors and its spontaneity. They were rejected and ridiculed by the art establishment. The official annual Salon exhibition refused to show their works removing any chance of the paintings being sold. In 1874 therefore, the Impressionists held a counter-Salon called le Salon des Refuses - the Salon of the rejected.

Renoir painted some of his most famous works in the 1870s, including the Bal au Moulin de la Galette, painted in 1876. This painting embodies the spirit of Impressionism – ordinary men and women, sailors and Montmartre girls—in casual poses, having a good time, dancing and drinking. They are depicted with emotion and sensuality caught, like a snapshot, in a fleeting moment of color and light.

But Renoir grew dissatisfied with the limitations of pure impressionism and was looking for new directions. In 1881 he went on a year-long visit to Algiers and Italy in search of inspiration. He never forgot his roots as a porcelain painter and, influenced by the harsh light of the Barbary Coast, his style became more classical and minimalist. His palette was reduced to only five colors.

In 1890, Renoir married Aline Charigot who had been his model for Luncheon of the Boating Party, painted in 1881. They had three children: Jean, who became a filmmaker, Pierre, who became an actor, and Claude.

By the 1890s Renoir was painting many female nudes, rendered in exotic colors and sensual flesh tones influenced by the sun-drenched south of France where he lived from 1905. By this time Renoir was crippled with arthritis and, unable to move his hands, painted with a brush tied to his wrists.

Renoir died at the age of 79. Before he died, the French government purchased his portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier, painted in 1877, and he was able to see it hanging in the Louvre.

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