Other
notable paintings by Renoir include La
Loge (1874); Girl
with a Fan (Mlle. Alphonsina Fournez) (1875) and The
Swing (1875); The
Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881); and Vase
of Chrysanthemums (1895) – one of the many still lifes of
flowers and fruit he painted throughout his life.
— Renoir was born in Limoges and brought up in Paris,
where his father, a tailor with a large family, settled in 1845. From the
age of thirteen he worked as an apprentice painter, painting flowers on
porcelain plates. This early apprenticeship left a certain trace on his
art, which was always decorative in spite of its later realism. After machines
for coloring ceramics had been introduced, he had to switch to decorating
fans and screens.
Having saved some money, Renoir attended the
École des Beaux-Arts in 1862-1863 in the studio of Charles
Gleyre [02 May 1806, or 1808? –1874]. There where he formed a lasting
friendship with Sisley
[30 Oct 1839 – 29 Jan 1899], Monet
[14 Nov 1840 – 05 Dec 1926], Fantin-Latour
[14 Jan 1836 – 25 Aug 1904], and Bazille
[06 Dec 1841 – 28 Nov 1870]. Some
time later he met Pissarro
[10 Jul 1830 – 13 Nov 1903] and Cézanne
[19 Jan 1839 – 22 Oct 1906]. Starting in about 1864, he painted with
them in the Barbizon district and became a leading member of the group of
Impressionists who met at the Café Guerbois.
He first exhibited at the Salon in 1864;
after that the jury rejected his works and only in 1867 accepted Lise,
portrait of his model and lover Lise Trehot {aka Trèschaude or Veryhot?}.
In 1867, he and Monet lived at Bazille’s house. In 1868-1870, he shared
a studio with Bazille
[06 Dec 1841 – 28 Nov 1870] in Paris. The young artists sat for each
other, i.e. Frederic
Bazille at His Easel by Renoir and Portrait
of Pierre-Auguste Renoir by Bazille.
Renoir spent the summer of 1869 with Monet at Bougival on the Seine; together
they worked out the main principles of the Impressionist method. It was
most strongly manifested in the plein-air studies of La
Grenouillère (1869). See and compare it with La
Grenouillère by Monet; the painters worked side by side.
It was in the 1870s, that Renoir’s Impressionism
style reached its peak. He worked at Argenteuil and in Paris. He participated
in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882 and was a
founding member of the review L’Impressionniste (1877), where he
published his article on the principles of contemporary art. The
Swing and the great composition of Le
Moulin de la Galette, one of the finest, most smiling of his masterpieces,
the models for which were his friends, mostly artists, and Montmartre girls.
It is like a marvelous tissue of interwoven sunlight and soft hazy blue.
Renoir achieved recognition earlier than
his friends. In 1879-1880, he sent several portraits to the official Salon,
among them Portrait
of the Actress Jeanne Samary and Portrait
of Mme Charpentier and Her Children. The artist found himself at
a critical point. In 1880, he met Aline Charigot, a common woman, whom
he would marry in 1890, they had 3 sons: Pierre Renoir [1885-], Jean Renoir
[15 Sep 1894 – 12 Feb 1979], who would become an important
film director, and Claude Renoir [1901–], called “Coco”. The same
year, 1880, Renoir broke his right arm and for some time painted with his
left hand. In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, later to Italy, where he was
impressed by Raphael
[06 Apr 1483 – 06 April 1520] and the Pompeii frescoes. The
Luncheon of the Boating Party is certainly one of Renoir’s finest
canvases.
In the 1880s, he abandoned Impressionism
for what is often called the “dry style”. He began a search for solid form
and stable composition, a search, which led him back to the masters of the
Renaissance. He worked more carefully and meticulously, his colors became
cooler and smoother. He later returned to hot rich colors and free brushwork
of his earlier days to portray nudes in sunlight, a style, which he continued
to develop to the end of his life: The
Bathers (1887).
In 1886, the art dealer Durand-Ruel exhibited
32 of Renoir's paintings in New York, thus opening the US market for Impressionism.
The evidence of Renoir’s (and other Impressionists’) success in the USA
is a great number of their pictures in US museums.
In December 1888, Renoir suffered the first
attacks of arthritis, which would cripple his hands; in 1898 after a serious
attack of the disease his right arm was paralyzed. From now on he painted,
overcoming strong pains, strapping a brush to his wrist. From 1903 (by which
time he was world-famous) he lived in the warmth of the south of France.
The rheumatism eventually crippled him (by 1912 he was confined to a wheelchair),
but he continued to paint until the end of his life, and in his last years
he also took up sculpture, directing assistants (usually Richard Guino,
a student of Maillol
[08 Dec 1861 – 27 Sep 1844]) to act as his hands (Venus
Victorious). In 1919, not long before his death, he finished, in
great pain, his large-scale composition The
Great Bathers (The Nymphs). Renoir died in Cagnes.
— Renoir and Monet
worked closely together during the late 1860s, painting similar scenes of
popular river resorts and views of a bustling Paris. Renoir was by nature
more solid than Monet, and while Monet fixed his attentions on the ever-changing
patterns of nature, Renoir was particularly entranced by people and often
painted friends and lovers. His early work has a quivering brightness that
is gloriously satisfying and fully responsive to what he is painting, as
well as to the effects of the light.
Renoir seems to have had the enviable ability
to see anything as potentially of interest. More than any of the Impressionists,
he found beauty and charm in the modern sights of Paris. He does not go
deep into the substance of what he sees but seizes upon its appearance,
grasping its generalities, which then enables the spectator to respond with
immediate pleasure. "Pleasure" may be decried by the puritanical instinct
within us all, but it is surely the necessary enhancer that life needs.
It also signifies a change from Realism:
the Impressionists' paintings have none of the labored toll of the peasants
of Millet
[04 Oct 1814 – 20 Jan 1875], for example. Instead they depict delightful,
intimate scenes of the French middle class at leisure in the country or
at cafés and concerts in Paris. Renoir always took a simple pleasure
in whatever met his good-humored attention, but he refused to let what he
saw dominate what he wanted to paint. Again he deliberately sets out to
give the impression, the sensation of something, its generalities, its glancing
life. Maybe, ideally, everything is worthy of attentive scrutiny, but in
practice there is no time. We remember only what takes our immediate notice
as we move along.
In The
Boating Party Lunch, a group of Renoir's friends are enjoying that
supreme delight of the working man and woman, a day out. Renoir shows us
interrelationships: notice the young man intent upon the girl at the right
chatting, while the girl at the left is occupied with her puppy. But notice
too the loneliness, however relaxed, that can be part of anyone's experience
at a lunch party. The man behind the girl and her dog is lost in a world
of his own, yet we cannot but believe that his reverie is a happy one. The
delightful debris
of the meal, the charm of the young people, the hazy brightness of the
world outside the awning - all communicates an earthly vision of paradise.
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.
— Born in Limoges to a tailor and dressmaker, Renoir moved with his
family from to Paris in 1844. There he was apprenticed to a porcelain manufacturer
from 1854 to 1858, where he painted rococo-style decorations, gaining experience
with the light, fresh colors that were to distinguish his Impressionist work
and also learning the importance of good craftsmanship. This early apprenticeship
left a certain trace on his art, which was always decorative in spite of
its later realism. His predilection towards light-hearted themes was also
influenced by the great Rococco masters, whose works he studied in the Louvre.
At 17, after machines for coloring ceramics had been introduced, Renoir
had to switch to copying paintings onto fans, lamp shades, and screens.
In 1862-1863 he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Sisley, Pissarro, Monet, and
Fantin-Latour. Renoir first exhibited at the Salon in 1864 and began at
about this time to work out-of-doors. Courbet
[10 Jun 1819 – 31 Dec 1877], Corot
[16 Jul 1796 – 22 Feb 1875], and Daubigny
[15 Feb 1817 – 19 Feb 1878] were important early influences, although
his progress toward a more vivid and sketchy style was encouraged by the
work of Monet
and Manet
[23 Jan 1832 – 30 Apr 1883]. He participated in the first impressionist
exhibition of 1874 but subsequently in only the second, third, and seventh
group shows. In 1881-1882 Renoir went to Algeria and Italy, where his exposure
to ancient and Renaissance art led him to introduce into his impressionism
a new linear and sculptural direction. Afler years of financial struggle,
a retrospective at Durand-Ruel in 1892 signaled greater popular success.
Although his health began to fail in the late nineties, Renoir continued
to paint and even experiment with sculpture until his death.
— Renoir ranks 47th in The
Times Top 200 Artists of the 20th Century to Now.
— LINKS
— Self-portrait
(1875; 72kb)
–- Madame
Clémentine Valensi Stora aka L'Algérienne (1870;
1177x818pix, 113kb _ .ZOOM
to 2354x1636pix, 420kb)
–- Mother,
Child, and Cat (1895, 117x104cm; 1036x922pix, 87kb)
–- Landscape
at Beaulieu(1893, 65x81cm; 911x1147pix, 150kb)
–- L'Enfant
au Biscuit, Jean, son of the artist (1897, 30x26cm; 1146x897pix, 140kb)
sketchy version 1, facing towards right, stops above waist level.
–- L'Enfant
au Biscuit (1897; 1034x690pix, 138kb) even sketchier version 2,
facing towards left, goes down to part of high chair _ Jean Renoir [15 Sep
1894 – 12 Feb 1979] became a prominent film director.
— Jean
Renoir Writing (1899; 1074x1031pix, 258kb) near-sighted? NOT writing,
but drawing, with a pencil. This is a couple of years before the next painting,
where he is shown reading laboriously, presumably soon after learning to
read.
— Jean
Renoir Reading (1901; 843x1011pix, 156kb) near-sighted?
— Jean
Renoir (1899)
— Jean
Renoir (1901; _ ZOOMable to 325kb) with long hair and ribbons that make
him look like a girl
— Jean
Renoir as a Hunter (1910)
— Bazille
Painting Le Héron (1867; _ ZOOMable to 323kb)
_ See Nature
Morte Avec un Héron (1867) by Bazille.
—
Claude Monet (reading book, holding pipe)
— Claude
Monet Reading the Paper
— The
Painter Alfred Sisley (1868; _ ZOOMable to 437kb)
— Les Parapluies
(1882 and 1886)
— La famille
de l'artiste
— In
the meadow
— Feeding
–- Young
Boy with a Cat
— A
Morning Ride in the Bois de Boulogne
–- La
Loge
–- La
Parisienne
–- Nini
dans le Jardin
–- La
Petite Fille à l'Arrosoir
–- La
Balançoire
–- Le
Moulin de la Galette
–- Sur
la Terrace
–- Les
Parapluies
–- Jeunes
filles au piano
— The
Conversation
— Madame
Charpentier and Her Children Paul (at her knee) and Georgette
— Jugglers
at the Cirque Fernando
— The
Laundress (1880)
— La
famille de l'artiste (1896)
— La
promenade
— Girl
Seated in a Garden
— Girl
Seated in a Meadow (1916)
–- Déjeuner
des canotiers
–- Les
Baigneuses
— Monet
au Jardin à Argenteuil (1873; _ ZOOMable to 205kb)
–- Portrait
de Monet
–- Portrait
de Bazille
— Richard
Wagner (1900)
— Young
Man Walking with Dogs in Fontainebleau Forest (1866)
— Woman
in a Boat. (1867)
— Le
Pont des Arts, Paris (1867)
— A
Morning Ride in the Bois de Boulogne (1873)
— Madame
Monet with Her Son
— La
première sortie (1875)
— Jeanne
Samary
— La
Grenouillère _ This painting has all the ingredients of Impressionism:
a sketch-like painting, which to contemporaries seemed unfinished, no carved-out
details, a glitter of sun reflecting the movements of the water, the boats
partly truncated to convey a sense of the passing moment, and the individual
details toned down in favor of the overall picture. But, the depiction of
reality is still there. Renoir has depicted an actual moment and life as
it is lived, a fragment without any greater depth of interpretation. The
theme is a new one: instead of something heroic, we have a casual, trivial
excerpt from reality, held together by the lighting. Compare it with La
Grenouillère by Monet; the painters worked side by side.
— 93
ZOOMable images at Wikimedia
— 1205
images at the Athenaeum |
^
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
