Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the founding figures of French Impressionism and among the most beloved painters in the history of Western art. Born in Limoges, France, Renoir moved with his family to Paris as a young boy and began his artistic career as an apprentice at a porcelain factory, where he painted decorative flowers and figures on plates and vases. This early practical training in decorative painting gave him a lifelong affection for beautiful surfaces and gently rendered figures that would carry through into his mature masterpieces.

Renoir eventually saved enough to pursue formal artistic training, enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts and studying in the atelier of Charles Gleyre, where he formed lifelong friendships with Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. Together these young artists would launch the Impressionist movement in the following decade, participating in the landmark 1874 exhibition that gave the movement its name. Renoir seemed to have the enviable ability to see anything as potentially of interest, and more than any of his Impressionist colleagues, he found beauty and charm in the modern sights of Paris. His mature paintings capture the intimate life of the French middle class at leisure in cafés, boating parties, dance halls, and the parks of Paris, all rendered with an affection and delight that continues to charm audiences today.

Beginning in the 1880s Renoir moved away from strict Impressionism toward a more sculpturally modeled, Ingres-inspired approach to the figure, producing an extended series of bathers and nudes that would occupy him for the rest of his life. His compositions became more classically structured, and his engagement with the great figural tradition of Western painting deepened. Renoir suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis in his later years, which increasingly limited his physical mobility, yet he continued to paint prolifically from his home at Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast.

Renoir did not turn to sculpture until late in his career, and only produced two pieces entirely by his own hand. In 1913 he began working with the young Catalan artist Richard Guino, a student of Aristide Maillol. He established a working method in which Renoir would select one of his paintings, and under his close supervision, Guino would model the image into a three-dimensional clay work. Renoir's paintings and sculptures are held in every major international museum, where they remain among the most beloved images in Western art.