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 :. | Pierre-Henri Renoir or the Artist's brother | Nymph by a Stream | Young Girl Undressing | Self-Portrait | La Grenouillere |
Related Artists:
Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen
(c.1500-1559) was a Dutch Northern Renaissance painter. According to Karel van Mander he was born in Beverwijk in 1500 and was honored for his career in the service of Charles V. He was a friend of Jan van Scorel and his portrait was engraved by Jan Wierix for Dominicus Lampsonius. Vermeyen was a painter and tapestry designer, probably a pupil of Jan Mabuse. About 1525 he became Court Painter to Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands at Mechelen and in 1535 he accompanied the Emperor Charles V, at the Conquest of Tunis (1535). This journey supplied him with scenes for later works, including tapestries designed 1545/48 for the Regent, Mary of Hungary. He died in Brussels. Many portraits are ascribed to him on very little evidence, according to modern scholars.
CAMASSEI, Andrea
Italian painter, Roman school (b. 1602, Bevagna, d. 1649, Roma) Andrea Camassei (1602-1649) was an Italian painter of the Baroque, who was mainly active in Rome under the patronage of the Barberini. He was born in Bevagna. He was active in painting in the Palazzo Barberini as well as in Antonio Barberini's favored church, Santa Maria della Concezione, where he painted the Assumption of the Virgin on the dome. His training was under Domenichino, but he also labored under the direction of Sacchi and Pietro da Cortona. He painted a Triumph of Constantine for the Baptistery of the Lateran Palace. He painted for the Taddeo Barberini, two large canvases (1638-39) depicting Massacre of the Niobids and Hunt of Diana. He also painted a Saints Bonaventura, Bernardino & Ludovico da Tolosa for Santa Caterina in Rapecchiano (Spello).
Jean-Jacques Bachelier
(1724 - 1806) was a French painter and director of the porcelain factory at Sevres. Admitted to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1752, he founded an art school using his own means in Paris in 1765 for the artisans in the historic college d'Autun (rue de l'ecole de medecine), which survived until the 19th century. For a list of works see: Jean-Jacques Bachelier (French edition), including Roman Charity (1765).