Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Daily Art Fixx - Art Blog: Modern Art, Art History, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Sculpture

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: 1841-1919

Born on February 25, 1841, in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was (with Claude Monet), a leading painter and originator of the Impressionist movement.

Renoir’s family moved to Paris in 1844 and in 1854, at the age of 13, he was apprenticed to the porcelain maker M. Levy where his artistic skills enabled him to paint designs on fine china. Renoir’s ambition to become a professional painter led to his study of Old Master paintings at the Louvre. By 1861, he was a regular visitor to the studio of Swiss painter and teacher Charles Gleyre. At Gleyre’s studio he began working en plein air and met other painters including Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Claude Monet. He was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the spring of 1862.

In 1864, Renoir’s painting “La Esmeralda” was accepted by the Salon and the following year, his portrait of William Sisley was also accepted. From 1870-71 Renoir served in the Franco-Prussian war in the Tenth Cavalry Regiment.

After several rejections from the Salon in 1872 and 1873, Renoir joined a group of artists, headed by Monet, in the first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris. His works for this exhibition adopted a lighter palette with more delicate and expressive brush strokes. Renoir continued to exhibit at the second and third Impressionist exhibitions but by the fourth in 1879-80, he returned to showing at the Salon, where he achieved great success.

In the mid-1880s, after traveling through Italy and working with Paul Cézanne in the South of France, Renoir experimented with more linear contours, thinner paint layers, and smoother brush strokes. This “Ingresque (dry) period”, received a mixed reception and lasted for about six years. After this period, Renoir, favouring the achievements of the Old Masters and a more fluid style, returned to using broader brush strokes and more vibrant colors.

In 1890, Renoir married Aline Victorine Charigot, who had modeled for him, and with whom he already had a child – Pierre in 1885.He painted numerous scenes of his wife, their three children, and their daily family life.

By 1900, Renoir was an established artist.He became Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1900 and his international standing grew, especially in the United States. In 1904, he was honoured at the Salon d’Automne with a gallery devoted to his works.

After 1902, Renoir’s health declined and from 1912 he was confined by rheumatism to a wheelchair. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast where he lived until his death. He continued to paint and also tried sculpting in the last years of his life. To facilitate painting his larger works, Renoir used a moving canvas or picture roll to aid with his limited mobility.

In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, on December 3, 1919.

Sources: MoMA, Wikipedia, Cleveland Museum of Art

Father’s Day: Portrait of the Artist’s Father

Happy Father’s Day all you dads out there! In honour of this special day, and to go along with my earlier post on Mother’s Day, I give you a selection of well known portraits of artist’s fathers. Throughout history, artists have painted their fathers for numerous reasons; “as a tribute, to capture a memorable face, to work through conflicting emotions, as a family legacy, or the simple availability of a model.”

The development of photography in the 19th century however, had a significant impact on portrait painting. Many turned to photography studios to have their portraits made as a cheaper alternative. Some artists found photography to be a useful aid to composition and from the Impressionists onward , artists have found numerous ways to expand their techniques and reinterpret the portrait to compete effectively with photography:

“Henri Matisse produced powerful portraits using non-naturalistic, even garish, colors for skin tones. Cézanne relied on highly simplified forms in his portraits, avoiding detail while emphasizing color juxtapositions. Gustav Klimt’s unique style applied Byzantine motifs and gold paint to his memorable portraits. Picasso painted many portraits, including several cubist renderings of his mistresses, in which the likeness of the subject is grossly distorted to achieve an emotional statement well beyond the bounds of normal caricature.”

As a result of an increased interest in abstract and non-figurative art, portrait painting in Europe and the Americas declined in the 1940s and 50s. In the 1960s an 70s, however, a revival of portraiture began. Artists such as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, and other contemporary artists have made the human face a focal point of their work. As well, photographic portraiture has become fully accepted in the art world and photo portraits are exhibited alongside painters in galleries and museum.

Have a great day everyone!