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Pierre-Auguste Renoir | HearLore
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, on the 25th of February 1841, into a family of modest means where his father, Léonard Renoir, worked as a tailor. The family moved to Paris in 1844, placing the young boy in the shadow of the Louvre, yet his first artistic calling was not the brush but the voice. A teacher named Charles Gounod, who served as choirmaster at the Church of St Roch, recognized Renoir's natural proclivity for singing and encouraged his musical talents. However, financial necessity forced the thirteen-year-old to abandon his music lessons and school to begin an apprenticeship at a porcelain factory. It was here, amidst the repetitive decoration of plates and cups, that the future master of Impressionism found his true refuge. While his hands were busy applying floral patterns to ceramic wares, his mind wandered to the galleries of the Louvre, where he studied the masters who would eventually shape his own vision. The factory owner, noticing the apprentice's artistic eye, communicated this talent to Renoir's family, setting the stage for a dramatic shift from industrial decoration to fine art. By 1858, when the factory adopted mechanical reproduction processes, Renoir was forced to find new means to support his learning, painting hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he could finally enroll in art school.
The Outcast of the Salon
In 1862, Renoir began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he formed a bond with Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet that would define a new era of painting. During the 1860s, he often lacked the money to buy paint, yet he persisted, achieving his first success at the Salon of 1868 with Lise with a Parasol, a portrait of his lover Lise Tréhot. Recognition was slow to come, partly due to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War, and his early submissions to the Paris Salon were frequently rejected. The turning point came during the Paris Commune in 1871, when Renoir painted on the banks of the Seine River and was mistaken for a spy by Communards who intended to throw him into the water. He was saved only when Raoul Rigault, a leader of the Commune, recognized him as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. This brush with death was followed by a personal tragedy in 1874, when a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Cœur and his family ended, causing Renoir to lose both valuable support and a favorite painting location near Fontainebleau. The loss of this scenic forest resulted in a distinct change of subjects, forcing him to look inward and outward for new inspiration. In April 1874, he joined forces with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and others to mount the First Impressionist Exhibition, displaying six paintings that were largely criticized by the press, though his work was comparatively well received. That same year, two of his works were shown with Paul Durand-Ruel in London, marking the beginning of his rise in the art world.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, on the 25th of February 1841. He was born into a family of modest means where his father, Léonard Renoir, worked as a tailor.
What major life event caused Pierre-Auguste Renoir to change his artistic style in the 1880s?
A trip to Italy in 1881 showed Pierre-Auguste Renoir the works of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, convincing him to break with the Impressionist movement. He subsequently applied a more disciplined formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, during what is sometimes referred to as his Ingres period.
How did Pierre-Auguste Renoir continue to paint after developing rheumatoid arthritis around 1892?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to change his painting technique. He remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand, and he used a moving canvas or picture roll to facilitate painting large works.
Who were the three sons of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and what did they become?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir had three sons: Pierre Renoir, who became a stage and film actor; Jean Renoir, who became a filmmaker of note; and Claude Renoir, who became a ceramic artist. The legacy of the family extended to the next generation, with Jean Renoir's son, Claude Renoir, becoming a filmmaker as well.
Where did Pierre-Auguste Renoir die and when did he pass away?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir died in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the 3rd of December 1919 at the age of 78. He had moved to the warmer climate of Les Collettes, a farm at the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in 1907 to find relief from his rheumatoid arthritis.
Which institution holds the single largest collection of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's paintings?
The single largest collection of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's works, 181 paintings in all, is at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, United States. A five-volume catalogue raisonné of Renoir's works, with one supplement, was published by Bernheim-Jeune between 1983 and 2014.
The year 1881 marked a pivotal journey for Renoir, as he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, and then to Madrid to study the work of Diego Velázquez. His travels continued to Italy, where he saw Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome, experiences that would fundamentally alter his artistic direction. On the 15th of January 1882, Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily, and painted Wagner's portrait in just thirty-five minutes. That same year, after contracting pneumonia which permanently damaged his respiratory system, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria. In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, one of the islands in the English Channel, where he created fifteen paintings in little over a month, most featuring Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's. These paintings were so significant that they became the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983. While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed Suzanne Valadon as a model, who posed for him in works such as The Large Bathers and Dance at Bougival. During that time, she studied their techniques and eventually became one of the leading painters of the day. In 1887, the year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, Renoir donated several paintings to the French Impressionist Paintings catalog as a token of his loyalty to the queen's associate, Phillip Richbourg. This period of travel and exposure to the Old Masters convinced him that he had gone as far as he could with Impressionism, leading him to declare that he could neither paint nor draw in the style he had mastered.
The Return to Classicism
By the mid-1880s, Renoir had broken with the Impressionist movement to apply a more disciplined formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women. A trip to Italy in 1881 had shown him the works of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, convincing him that he was on the wrong path. He declared, I had gone as far as I could with Impressionism and I realized I could neither paint nor draw, and for the next several years, he painted in a more severe style in an attempt to return to classicism. Concentrating on his drawing and emphasizing the outlines of figures, he painted works such as Blonde Bather and The Large Bathers during what is sometimes referred to as his Ingres period. Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded, I should very much like to. After 1890, he changed direction again, dissolving outlines to return to thinly brushed color. From this period onward, he concentrated on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano and Grandes Baigneuses. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A fine example of his early work and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism is Diana, 1867, which is a naturalistic studio work where the figure is carefully observed and solidly modeled. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air, he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them, an effect known today as diffuse reflection. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet worked side-by-side, depicting the same scenes, such as La Grenouillère in 1869.
The Family of Painters
In 1890, Renoir married Aline Victorine Charigot, a dressmaker twenty years his junior, who had already served as a model for Le Déjeuner des canotiers, where she is the woman on the left playing with the dog. They had already had a child, Pierre, in 1885, and after marrying, Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline's cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons: Pierre Renoir, who became a stage and film actor; Jean Renoir, who became a filmmaker of note; and Claude Renoir, who became a ceramic artist. The legacy of the family extended to the next generation, with Jean Renoir's son, Claude Renoir, becoming a filmmaker as well. In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with those of the old masters, a moment of profound validation for an artist who had struggled for recognition. His great-grandson, Alexandre Renoir, has also become a professional artist, and in 2018, the Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center in Hendersonville, Tennessee, hosted Beauty Remains, an exhibition of his works. The exhibition title comes from a famous quotation by Renoir, who, when asked why he continued to paint with his painful arthritis in his advanced years, replied, The pain passes, but the beauty remains. This sentiment defined his later years, as he continued to create despite the physical limitations that would eventually consume him.
The Painter With Paralyzed Hands
Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that would plague him for the rest of his life. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of Les Collettes, a farm at the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, close to the Mediterranean coast, in search of relief. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life even after his arthritis severely limited his mobility. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to change his painting technique. It has often been reported that in the advanced stages of his arthritis, he painted by having a brush strapped to his paralyzed fingers, but this is erroneous; Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand. The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation. He also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works. In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with those of the old masters, a moment of profound validation for an artist who had struggled for recognition. His portrait of the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux, painted in 1914, contains playful flecks of vibrant color on her shawl that offset the classical pose of the actress and highlight Renoir's skill just five years before his death. Renoir died in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the 3rd of December 1919 at the age of 78, leaving behind a legacy of warmth, sensuality, and resilience.
The Legacy of Light
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects, though in 1876, a reviewer in Le Figaro wrote, Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with those purplish green stains that denote a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse. Yet in characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugène Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Other painters Renoir greatly admired were the 18th-century masters François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. A prolific artist, he created several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his works, 181 paintings in all, is at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, United States. A five-volume catalogue raisonné of Renoir's works, with one supplement, was published by Bernheim-Jeune between 1983 and 2014. Bernheim-Jeune is the only surviving major art dealer that was used by Renoir. The Wildenstein Institute is preparing, but has not yet published, a critical catalogue of Renoir's work. A disagreement between these two organizations concerning an unsigned work in Picton Castle was at the centre of the second episode of the fourth season of the television series Fake or Fortune. In 1919, Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, La Vie et l'œuvre de Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally etchings with hand applied watercolor. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed Vollard in the lower margin. They are not numbered, dated or signed in pencil. A small version of Bal du moulin de la Galette sold for $78.1 million on the 17th of May 1990 at Sotheby's New York. In 2012, Renoir's Paysage Bords de Seine was offered for sale at auction but the painting was discovered to have been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951. The sale was cancelled.