French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | Inthe St Cloud Park | Woman Reading fff | The First Step | The Wasberwoman | Umbrellas |
Related Artists:
William Blamire Young
English Australian artist . 1862-1935 known as Blamire Young, was an English Australian artist. Young was born at Londesborough, Yorkshire, the second son of a family of 12. His father, Colonel Young, came of prosperous yeoman stock. Blamire Young was educated at the Forest School, Walthamstow, where he received a classical training, and going on to Cambridge University specialized in mathematics. That he completed his course with no better than third-class honours was no doubt partly caused by his discovery of the print collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and his association with the Cambridge Fine Art Society. It had been intended that he should become a clergyman, but Young felt that he had no vocation for that work and obtained the position of mathematical master at Katoomba College, Katoomba, New South Wales, which had been founded by John Walter Fletcher in 1884. Young remained at the school for eight years. In his spare time he practised painting, and meeting Phil May received some instruction from him in painting in oil. In 1893, he returned to England and after working for a few months under Hubert von Herkomer, became associated with James Pryde and William Nicholson in poster work. In 1895 Young returned to Australia and with the Lindsay brothers and Harry Weston did some excellent posters. But the field was limited and many years of poverty followed, during which a certain amount of writing was done for the press. He began exhibiting at the Victorian Artists' Society, but sales were few and the one-man show was then unknown. During his visit to England he had married Mabel Sawyer, an expert wood-carver, and while the lean period lasted Mrs Young helped to keep the house going by executing commissions for Melbourne architects. It was not until 1911 that the appreciation of Young's art really began to be shown. In that year he held an exhibition at Melbourne of small pictures, some of which had similar qualities to the Japanese coloured wood-cuts of the eighteenth century. Sales were good, partly because the prices were low, and the artist was sufficiently encouraged to hold an exhibition at Adelaide. This was both an artistic and a financial success, other shows followed in Melbourne and Sydney, and at last, in his fiftieth year, Young's reputation as an artist was established. In 1912 he sailed for Europe and after a stay in Spain settled in England. Eighteen months later in August 1914 his first show, opened at the Bailey Galleries. All the arrangements had been made and the pictures hung when war broke out. Young had been a good marksman in his youth, and for three years worked as an instructor in musketry and machine-gunnery. Immediately after the war he took up his painting again and exhibited at the Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists. Back in Australia in 1923 Young established himself at Montrose in the hills about 20 miles east of Melbourne. He acted as art critic for the The Herald and held occasional one-man shows.
Lethiere, Guillaume Guillon
French Painter, 1760-1832
Jacob van Loo
(1614 - 26 November 1670) was a Flemish painter who is considered one of the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century. Van Loo is known for his conversational groupings, his use of a subtle color palette and his nudes. He was the founder of the Van Loo family of painters. Van Loo was born in Sluis, Zeeland, in the Dutch Republic. Some sources have spe,culated that his father, Jan van Loo, may have been a notary, but more often his father is described as a painter from whom Jacob van Loo received his early training. Little is known of Van Loo's early history due to the destruction of the city archives in Sluis during World War II. His early influences included Thomas de Keyser and Jacob Adriaensz Backer. In 1642, van Loo moved to Amsterdam, where his contemporaries included Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Bartholomeus van der Helst. In 1643 he married the sister of the painter, Martinus Lengele. The couple had six children. They lived on Rozengracht in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam. Eglon van der Neer became one of his pupils. In 1660, Van Loo fled the city after fatally stabbing someone during an altercation at an inn. He was sentenced to death in absentia which forever prevented his return to Holland. Van Loo settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the Academie de peinture et de sculpture. He died in Paris in 1670. Van Loo's work was done in the Baroque style that had originated in Rome. The Baroque style was popular throughout Europe during this period. Van Loo was a major influence on Johannes Vermeer as can be seen in Vermeer's painting, Diana and Her Companions. Van Loo painted many portraits. Among his subjects were Johan Huydecoper van Maarssenveen; his sister, Leonara Huydecoper, who was married to Jan J. Hinlopen; Joan Ortt, who was later involved with Antoinette Bourignon; and his wife. Jacob van Loo's son, Louis Abraham van Loo, was also a painter, as were his grandsons, Jean-Baptiste van Loo and Charles-Andra van Loo.