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Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the leading artists of the highly influential movement known as Impressionism. Born in Limoges, France in 1841, he soon moved with his working-class family to Paris. Showing a precocious talent for painting, he apprenticed as a porcelain painter at the age of 13 and remained until the firm went bankrupt in 1858.

In 1860, Renoir was admitted to the Louvre as an authorized copier. He made his first attempts at painting by studying the works of such eighteenth-century painters as Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher.

Between 1861 and 1864, Renoir began his formal art training, studying in the studio of the Swiss painter Gleyre and entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1862. There he formed friendships with Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Painting together outdoors during their student years, the four friends are said to have come to oppose the conservative, classical training of the Ecole.

Their work became known for its spontaneity and freshness, capturing the fleeting effects of light and color. The quickly applied brushstrokes and patches of bright color can be seen in Renoir's Grande Vaso di Fiori (Spring Bouquet), 1866, and Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 1881.

Renoir gained critical recognition and achieved financial security for the first time in his career in the late 1870s. He received commissions to paint portraits of prominent Parisians and began to exhibit and sell his works through a respected Paris gallery. Over the course of his career, Renoir worked with other famous fellow Impressionists including Pissarro, Cezanne, Manet, Morisot and Degas.

One of Renoir's most renowned works, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81, portrays newly liberated members of a changing society. These are youthful, idealized portraits of his friends and colleagues, including fellow painters and even the young woman he would later marry.

Another of Renoir's most beloved and delightful works, Dance at Bougival, 1882-83, captures the immediacy of another sunny, open-air café. The two dancers are again friends of Renoir's.

Despite debilitating arthritis, Renoir continued to paint through his later years. He died at his home in Cagnes in 1919 at the age of seventy-eight.

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