A Pierre-Auguste Renoir Biography

Learn about Pierre-Auguste Renoir, enjoy the images & read the biography of Renoir's life and art; see also my Renoir slideshow of selected paintings. Have a good day, everyone!

"We were all one group when we first started out.
We stood shoulder to shoulder and
encouraged each other . . ."[1]
-- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
twenty years after the first Impressionist show
(Société anonyme) of 1874

Beginnings and Youth

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Self-Portrait, 1910, oil on canvas, Durand-Ruel Collection, New York.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), a French painter, whose art celebrated beauty and sensuality, was one of the leading artists in the development of Impressionism. Renoir, who was the sixth of seven children, two of whom died in infancy, was born on February 25, 1841, at Limoges, a city in the centre of France famous for pottery and enamel work. Renoir's father was a tailor who had moved his family to Paris in 1844. As a child, Renoir must have shown an exceptional gift for music because Charles Gounod, who had taught him singing and piano, wanted the young Renoir to study music professionally.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Still-Life with Flowers in Vase, 1866, oil on canvas, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Instead, Renoir chose to go down a different path, but he had kept his love of music throughout his life. Renoir would whistle incessantly whilst painting. In 1995 Paul Renoir, the artist's then 70-year old grandson, told a gathering of the 13th European Congress of Rheumatology in Amsterdam that his grandfather Pierre-Auguste was always singing or humming tunes from opera while painting, as well as taking his piano with him whenever the Renoir family moved, 53 times in Paris alone.[2]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odalisque, 1870, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

At about the age of fourteen, Renoir became an apprentice to M. Levy, a porcelain painter. When Levy's firm closed down in 1858, Renoir then painted decorative fans for his brother Henri, copying the art of Watteau, Lancret, Boucher, and Fragonard, and painted window blinds for a M. Gilbert. Renoir continued this work until he won a place at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1862, becoming a pupil of Charles Gleyre until 1864. At Gleyre's atelier Renoir met Monet, Bazille, and Sisley, all of whom were to share in forming the new naturalistic movement which, during the 1870s, became known as Impressionism. In later years, when Renoir and his friends became famous, Renoir was the only one to recognize the efforts of his studio master Charles Gleyre; and in the 1880s Renoir was to return to the techniques Glenyre had taught him.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lise with Umbrella, 1867, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang, Essen.


This painting, shown at the 1868 Paris Salon, received considerable acclaim. Renoir's first successful submission to the Paris Salon was in 1864 with a portrait of Sisley's wealthy father.



Renoir and Impressionism

By 1864 Renoir was already accompanying his friends, Monet, Bazille and Sisley, on 'en plein-air' painting expeditions at Chailly, on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest. The village of Chailly was in the region of Barbizon, where the previous generation of en plein-air landscapists gathered to paint. Narcisse-Virgile Diaz of the Barbizon School of painters (c. 1830-1870) was a special mentor who, unlike the other Barbizon artists, used a multitude of juicy, piled-up brush strokes and a vivid palette. Renoir already admired Corot, Courbet and many other works of this period for their qualities of mass and sensuousness, but Renoir's palette, which grew more delicate towards the end of the 1860s, may also owe something to his earlier apprenticeship in porcelain painting on white surfaces and to Diaz.[3]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of the Marriage: Sisley and His Wife, 1868, oil on canvas, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.

During the late 1860s Renoir's style was at a crossroads. It became custom for Renoir and his friends to meet on most evenings at the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles quarter of Paris, with Édouard Manet at the centre of most discussions. In 1869 Renoir spent the summer living with his parents at Louveciennes. At this time Renoir travelled the few miles nearly every day up the river to Bougival to where Monet was living and together they painted side by side at the popular bathing establishment known as La Grenouillère on the Ile-de-Croissy on the Seine.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère, 1869, oil on canvas, National Museum, Stockholm.

To some minds this period spent at La Grenouillère was the place where Impressionism was born. Both Monet and Renoir painted the same views at La Grenouillère with practically the same high-keyed palette and short, rapid brush strokes. However, in comparing the two painters' work from that summer, Renoir's paintings focused more on the social interaction and gestures of the figures in the scenes. By the late 1860s Renoir had moved away from and modified the Courbet-influenced styling of his previous figure paintings. Renoir was now echoing Monet's approach. Renoir's brush strokes became lighter and more delicate-- the large masses of local colour were broken down into the richly varied effects of fleeting light on surfaces.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Chrysanthemums, 1881-82, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Batignolles group were scattered, some of the artists enlisted and others took refuge. Renoir joined the Tenth Cavalry Regiment and was sent to the Bordeaux region.[4] Manet remained in Paris, a lieutenant in the National Guard. Monet and Pissarro went separately to London. Frédéric Bazille was killed in battle at Beaunes-la-Rolande near Orléans.[5] Cézanne sought refuge in the fishing village of L'Estaque and in Aix-en-Provence, near Marseille.[6]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf, 1872, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Between 1871 and 1874, Renoir frequently visited Monet in Argenteuil on the Seine just outside Paris, where they again painted the same subjects. Renoir's painting, Pont Neuf (1872) with the "briefly sketched-in figures highlighted with dabs of pure pigment" showed Monet's influence.

Deepening frustration and repeated rejections from the official Paris Salon forced the group of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Degas, Cézanne and others to form the Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. in December 1873. Their first exhibition opened April 15 to May 15, 1874, deliberately timed to upstage the official Paris Salon. Nadar's former photography studio on the Boulevard des Capucines was used, with thirty artists participating but without Édouard Manet who had argued that "the Salon is the true battlefield."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Loge, 1874, oil on canvas, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Renoir's now famous painting La Loge (1874) passed unnoticed as one of his seven paintings exhibited at the first show. La Loge was later bought in 1875 by a small-time dealer Père Martin for 425 francs. The 1874 first exhibition was a financial disaster, with very few paintings sold and low attendance. However, it was this first exhibit which prompted the critic Louis Leroy's satirical article in the magazine Le Charivari, with the headline "Exhibition of the Impressionists," a word Leroy had coined from Monet's seascape titled Impression, Sunrise,that gave the group its name. Renoir participated in four of the total eight Impressionist exhibitions, in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882.[7]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Towards the end of the 1870s Renoir became less involved with the Impressionists as a group. He saw the Paris Salon as the place to sell his paintings. In 1876, Renoir had the good fortune to meet the Charpentiers, a wealthy and influential couple, who were now beginning to commission portraits as well as decorations for their house in Paris. Success came in the Salon of 1879 with the Portrait of Madame Charpentier and Her Children.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Madame Charpentier and Her Children, 1878, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Wave, 1879, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

I included this Renoir painting because I like its abstract and timeless quality.

Maturity and Change

An artistic crisis loomed ahead for Renoir. In the spring of 1881, Renoir took his first trip abroad to Algeria in the footsteps of Delacroix, which reassured him about his direction as an Impressionist; and he was soon back in France at Chatou and Bougival painting masterpieces such as The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881).

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881, oil on canvas, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

The Luncheon of the Boating Party demonstrates Renoir's assured handling of a complex group of figures. The woman on the left holding a small dog is Aline Charigot, Renoir's future wife. This painting shows Renoir's Impressionist technique at its height, where he used gentle modeling and his feathery brush strokes to give the relaxing group of figures a soft-focus charm.

But, by October 1881, he had left for Italy to see "the Raphaels." In a letter from Italy in November 1881, Renoir wrote to his art dealer, Durand-Ruel, " . . . it's all a mess. I'm still making a mess and I'm forty years old."[8] Renoir also stated, "I had come to the end of Impressionism. I was reaching the conclusion that I didn't know how either to paint or draw. In a word, I was at a dead end."[9] He had travelled to Italy seeking the formal classicism of Raphael and other Renaissance masters. Renoir had also stayed in Venice and studied the work of Veronese. He was now also ready to look again at Ingres. In Sicily he had met and painted a portrait of the composer Richard Wagner. From here, Renoir returned to France in January 1882 and journeyed to L'Estaque and joined Cézanne on landscape expeditions, where Renoir fell ill with pneumonia.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Umbrellas (Les Parapluies), c.1881-85, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London.

The Umbrellas, which was reworked during the 1880s and left unfinished, showed his confusion and artistic crisis at the time, trying to reconcile a linear style with Impressionist brushwork. The solid handling of the umbrellas could have been Cézanne's influence; the group on the right is painted in the delicate style associated with his Impressionist period, whilst the girl on the left foreground shows the beginnings of a sharper-edged and more formal style influenced by classical art.

Renoir's change in style became evident in 1883 when he held a one-man show at Durand-Ruel's. At year-end he visited Cézanne, as he did again in 1885. Following the birth of his first son Pierre in 1885, he started painting scenes and portraits of family life. His second son Jean, who became a distinguished film director, was born in 1894. A third son, Claude ("Coco"), was born in 1901.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gabrielle and Jean, 1895-96, oil on canvas, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.

Gabrielle, a distant relative of Renoir's wife Aline, came to live with the Renoirs as a housekeeper. She stayed with the family for more than 20 years and became a frequent model for Renoir.

In the mid-1880s, Renoir produced a series of female nude bathers as a vehicle for expressing light, colour and form, culminating in the monumental The Bathers (Les Baigneuses) of 1887. He drew new inspiration from Velázquez after a trip to Spain in 1892. He rediscovered the delicateness of Corot whose work was now much in demand by collectors and looked again to the 18th-century French painters Watteau and Fragonard whose art he had copied onto fans during his youth. After the 1890s Renoir gradually soften and relaxed his classical linear styling, loosening his brushwork.

The Later Years

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Swing, 1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

By 1897 six works by Renoir, including The Swing (La Balançoire) and The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette), had at last entered the national museum collections.[10]

Few people knew that Renoir suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis during the last 25 years of his life, the disease probably starting around 1892 when he was in the prime of his life at about age 50 (for photos & more on Renoir's arthritic condition, see the web link under Footnote [2] in my References). In 1901 Renoir could still use his hands normally, but he required a walking cane to assist him. The disease become more aggressive from 1903 onwards. By 1908, he had to use two walking canes to move around. At the age of 71 Renoir became wheelchair-bound from 1912 onwards. Renoir kept working and adapted his painting technique continuously. Undaunted by his crippling arthritis and severe pain, Renoir was inspired to start a series of sculptures in 1907 echoing his nude figure paintings. However, Renoir had to use the hands of a gifted young modeller named Guino, who executed the work from drawings.[11]

In 1908 the Renoirs moved to the south of France to Cagnes-sur-Mer near Nice, where the warmer climate eased Renoir's severe arthritis.


Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Large Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses), 1918-19, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

To paint his large 160 cm by 110 cm The Large Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses), 1918-19, Renoir replaced his easel with the ingenious invention of a 'moving canvas or picture roll' in which the canvas was fixed onto wooden slats which could turn around two spindles linked by the chain of his old bicycle and driven by a crank to move the canvas up or down.[12]

In 1900 Renoir received the honour of a Knight (Chevalier) of the Légion d'Honneur; and in the last year of his life, he became a Commander (Commandeur) of the Légion d'Honneur.[13]

It is the results of Renoir's refusal to paint the "unpleasant things in the world" and to make it his focus to paint only the beauty and the joys of life with his cheery rainbow colours and where the sun always shines that make Renoir's paintings so appealing and so well-loved by many. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who painted to the very last day and outlived all his comrades except Monet, died of pneumonia at Cagnes-sur-Mer on December 3, 1919, at the age of 78. His wife, Aline, had died earlier in 1915.

References:
Images from Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved March 1, 2008.
[1] Robert Katz and Celestine Dars, The Impressionists, rev. ed. (London: Anness Publishing Limited, 1994), 96.
[2] Web link to article by Annelies Boonen, and others, "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis," BMJ (British Medical Journal) 1997; 315: 1704-1708 (20 December 1997). http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7123/1704.
[3] David Thomas, Renoir: French School (London: The Medici Society Limited, 1966), 3.
[4] Katz and Dars, The Impressionists, rev. ed., 226.
[5] Ibid., 86.
[6] Ulrike Becks-Malorny, Paul Cézanne. Phil Goddard, trans. (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1995), 20.
[7] Gabriele Crepaldi, The Impressionists (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2002), chart.
[8] Katz and Dars, The Impressionists, rev. ed., 240.
[9] Ibid., 118.
[10] Thomas, Renoir: French School, 12.
[11] Boonen and others, "How Renoir Coped with Rheumatoid Arthritis," 20 December 1997.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Katz and Dars, The Impressionists, rev. ed., 242.

To cite this article, please use: "A Pierre-Auguste Renoir Biography by Margaret Lee," Art Bytes (March 9, 2008) at http://art-bytes.blogspot.com/