9781422271797

Pierre-Auguste RENOIR

Ansel Adams

John James Audubon Mary Cassatt Paul Cézanne Leonardo Da Vinci Edgar Degas The Hudson River School Michelangelo Claude Monet The Pre-Raphaelites Pierre-Auguste Renoir Vincent Van Gogh Frank Lloyd Wright

Pierre-Auguste RENOIR

MASON CREST MIAMI

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First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-4641-2 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-4632-0 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-7179-7

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Developed and produced by National Highlights, Inc. Editor: Regency House Publishing Limited Interior and cover design: Regency House Publishing Limited Text © 2023 Regency House Publishing Limited

Front cover: Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881) Page 1: Young Woman Sewing (1879) Page 2–3: Meadow (La Prarie) (1880)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Art of Renoir 7 Series Glossary of Key Terms 92

Index 94 List of Plates 96

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

PLATE 1 Photograph of Pierre Auguste Renoir

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MASTERS OF ART

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1841, in Limoges, France. When he was still a small child, his family moved to Paris, where he attended a Catholic school. In 1862, he began studies at the École des Beaux Arts, where he met other important artists of the period, including Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. As a young man, Renoir was an apprentice to a porcelain painter. In his spare time, he worked on his main interests—drawing and painting. In the early years, Renoir struggled financially. However, by the 1870s, Renoir’s fortunes changed when he became a founding member of the Impressionism movement. Eventually, Renoir became one of the most famous artists of his time. In 1890, Renoir married Aline Charigot and they had three sons. He died 1919 in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France.

THE ART OF RENOIR

T he history of Impressionism includes a few painters who are central to its development and a large number who are peripheral but nonetheless important because they add some small piece to the large jigsaw that wass the Impressionist Revolution. There are perhaps four painters at the center of the movement, each contributing something essential in its initial creative stages. They are Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir, the role and contribution offered by Renoir being the least easy to define. His participation in the creation of what has become known as Impressionism is unquestionable, and during the period that he was working closely with him, his work certainly has an affinity with Monet’s. But outside this relatively short association of a little more than a decade, Renoir’s work goes through a number of developments, both before and after, that appear to have little connection with the characteristics that are

familiarly Impressionist. However, the general character and philosophy of the movement is recognized in his work. Perhaps what is important to establish is the earlier development of Renoir’s life before he encountered those painters in whose company the stylistic and philosophical character was developed, and also to examine the work that he produced after the break-up of the movement into independent directions after the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. One general point, however, is undoubtedly true: Renoir has been so positively described as an Impressionist for so long that, however difficult it may be to accommodate his work at some stages, he will always be known as an Impressionist. That may be unfair to his overall aims and achievement and may limit recognition of his non-Impressionist work, even to devalue it. Further, his artistic aims and his attitude toward painting

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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

PLATE 2 The Painter Lacoeur in the Forest of Fontainebleau (1866) Oil on canvas, 41 3 ⁄ 4 x 31 1 ⁄ 2 inches (106 x 80 cm) The influence of two of Renoir’s early mentors can be seen in this painting. The general effect of the work shows the quality of Courbet in its heavy paint and sturdy drawing and, in its plein-air treatment in the Forest of Fontainebleau, the impact of Diaz’s admonition to him two years earlier to stop using black. Painted while he was staying at Marlotte, near Fontainebleau, the painting represents only one aspect of Renoir’s style at that time since, while at Marlotte, he also painted The Inn of Mother Anthony, a scene at the inn at which he stayed, with his friends Monet, Bazille, and Sisley all depicted in it. This painting is dark with much black and linear outlining. Bazille, born in Montpellier, had originally been expected by his father to follow a medical career, but the attraction of painting drew him to Paris and Gleyre’s atelier, where he met Monet, Sisley, and Renoir, and they were close friends until Frédéric Bazille was killed in the Franco Prussian War of 1870. Bazille was talented and painted his friends in their studios, as well as himself acting as a model for them. He was tall and thin, as is evident in the crouching pose in this painting, and he is consequently easily recognizable in their paintings. For example, he appears twice in Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe . Renoir’s style at the time still owed much to Courbet, and this is not an “Impressionist” work. It is constructed on the academic tonal method and is far closer to Manet than the paintings of his friends. PLATE 3 (right) Portrait of Frédéric Bazille (1867) Oil on canvas, 41 1 ⁄ 3 x 29 inches (105 x 73.5 cm)

as declared by him and revealed in his temperament are ultimately far from those of other Impressionists—Monet or Pissarro, for instance—however superficially similar they may seem. Of course, this is not surprising; as we are constantly being reminded, we are all different with a unique experience and philosophy. We do not remain through life the same individual as when we began it. Renoir, at the age of twenty-two when in the studio of Gabriel-Charles Gleyre, learning methods and technique as a student with Monet and Bazille, had once been accused by Gleyre of “seeming to take painting as a pleasure.” Renoir’s reply: “Quite true, if painting were not a pleasure to me, I certainly should not do it.” This is perhaps a more significant remark than even Renoir

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MASTERS OF ART

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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

PLATE 4 Lise with a Parasol (1867) Oil on canvas, 71 2 ⁄ 3 x 46 1 ⁄

2 inches (182 x

118 cm)

At this time, Renoir was hoping to make an income from portrait painting and submitted work to the Salon each year after his Esmeralda Dancing with her Goat was accepted in 1863, other works being rejected in 1864, accepted in 1865, and refused in 1865, 1866, and 1867. His Lise with a Parasol was accepted in 1868. Lise Tréhot was sixteen when Renoir painted her, and he saw her as an ideal subject, physically mature but still retaining the freshness of youth. The portrait shows the influence of Manet in the dramatic opposition of dark navy blue belt and sash and brilliant white dress, but with its closely modeled paint treatment and careful drawing of an atmospheric sun dappled background not derived from Manet.

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MASTERS OF ART

PLATE 5 Boy with a Cat (1868) Oil on canvas, 48 1 ⁄

2 x 26 inches (123 x 66 cm)

knew, since from the beginning of his working life he was in search of not only satisfaction in labor, a job well done, but also pleasure and, even delight, in what he did. His life did not start propitiously. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges in central France, on February 25, 1841, the fourth of five children. Two painters, both part of the Impressionist Fevolution, and later to become his friends, Frédéric Bazille and Berthe Morisot, were born in the same year. Renoir’s father was a small-time tailor, who despite making a meager living, appears to have been concerned for his sons’ futures as well as wishing to improve his own circumstances, and moved with his family to Paris when Pierre was four. Although he had little money, he was interested in objets d’art in a way that many of the petite bourgeoisie were, and even hoped that his sons might have work of an artistic, if humble, kind. Renoir’s mother, too, had a This strange and unusual study was undertaken when Renoir was concerned with the academic qualities of draftsmanship, and he made a number of nude studies, which usually acquired a classical title. A painting of a nude Lise from the previous year was turned into a “Diana” by the addition of a dead deer and an archer’s bow. In this painting, no such alternative seems obvious, and the careful drawing of the figure and the fat, contented cat remain an example of Renoir’s pursuit at that time of fine painting within the academic tradition.

sensitive nature and was accustomed to taking her sons for walks in the woods, drawing their attention to the beauty and endless variety of nature. Pierre-Auguste was a good-humored and serious minded youth with a conscientious spirit. At school in Paris, he showed an early talent for drawing and had a good ear for music. He sang in the choir of the local 11

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

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MASTERS OF ART

PLATE 6 La Grenouillère (c. 1869) Oil on canvas, 23 1 ⁄ 4 x 31 1 ⁄

2 inches (59 x 80 cm)

Although painted around the same time as the previous work, Renoir here reveals an evident progress toward Impressionism. Perhaps this not surprising, given that he painted with Monet at that time, and La Grenouillère was a favorite recreation spot for Parisians. La Grenouillère was on Croissy Island in the Seine near Bougival and was, as said in a contemporary report, “inhabited by a swarm of writers, men, and women belonging to the artistic life of Paris ... along the banks at certain hours of the day, sometimes fishing, sometimes for the pleasure of bathing in open water.” It became a social fad when Louis Napoléon and Eugénie condescended to visit the place in 1869. Monet and Renoir, neither of whom was permanently located, naturally gravitated there and painted side by side, each influencing the other to some degree. It was a preparatory stage in the evolution that took definite form at Argenteuil in the early 1870s.

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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

PLATE 7 Bather with Her Griffon (1870) Oil on canvas, 72 1 ⁄ 2 x 45 1 ⁄ 4 inches (184 x 115 cm) The subject of this painting is again Lise Tréhot but without the classical trappings. In this painting, Renoir was influenced by the work of Gustave Courbet, and the pose is reminiscent of him. The fact that the dog is a griffon, a creature with mythological associations, may have some significance, since he submitted it to the Salon of 1870 and it was accepted. While he was exploring pictorial possibilities with such paintings as those he produced while working with Monet at La Grenouillère, Renoir continued to paint more traditional subjects, particularly nude studies for exhibition at the Salon, remarking that if showing at the Salon did no good, it at least did no harm.

PLATE 8 (right) On the Grass (1873) Oil on canvas, 23 1 ⁄ 2 x 28 15 ⁄

16 in.

(59.7 x 73.5 cm)

The Bather with Her Griffon (left) is painted in a Realistic style. In comparison, On the Grass follows the principles of Impressionism, using light and shade and a much looser and softer approach.

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