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 :. | The Bathers | Leontine and Coco | Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot | Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne | The Fisherman |
Related Artists:
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
1841-1920 Spanish Son of Federico de Madrazo y Kentz. Because of his ability and training with his father, Federico, in the Real Academia de S Fernando in Madrid and with Leon Cogniet in Paris, he seemed destined to continue the family tradition of academic painting. However, due to the influence of the Belgian Alfred Stevens, of his brother-in-law, Mariano Jose Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal, and the Parisian environment, he exchanged dry historical painting for the preciousness of the tableautin, the small, intimate genre painting. He lived in Paris and New York and became so remote from Spanish artistic life that he and Fortuny y Marsal were the only Spanish artists not to participate in any national exhibition, and because of this the Spanish state never directly acquired their works. In 1882, with Giuseppe De Nittis, Stevens and the gallery owner Georges Petit, he co-founded the Exposition Internationale de Peinture, designed to promote foreign artists in Paris. Madrazo Garreta most characteristic works are the female portrait and the witty and elegant genre painting, with soft, delicate tones and suggestive poses. The influence of the Rococo and of Japanese art is reflected in his painting, which expresses an exquisite aristocratic or bourgeois ideal, the illusion of a refined, sensual and superficial life. Consequently, his works are also described as representing the Parisian seraglio. American collectors paid high prices for his paintings, for example Alexander Turney Stewart bought Lady with a Parrot; Carnival Festival (1878) was purchased by L. Wolfe; and Girls at the Window (1875) was bought by J. W. Vanderbilt, the last two now being in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His portraits were better received in Spain although because of collectors such as Ramen de Errazu (d 1909), the Museo del Prado has a good number of his paintings (e.g. After the Bath).
Antoon Claeissens
(his name is given in many varieties, with his first name rendered as Anton, Anthonie, Anthony, Anthuenis, and his surname as Claes, Claesz, Claeis, Claeiss, Claessens and Claeissins), the son of Pieter Claes the elder, painted historical and allegorical subjects, and portraits. He was a native of Bruges, and there entered the Guild of St. Luke in 1575, and became its dean in 1586, 1590, and 1601. He died in 1613. His works, several of which are in the Hôtel-de-Ville and churches of Bruges, are distinguished by their fine colouring and finish. In the H6tel-de-Ville is a 'Grand Banquet' with many portraits of magistrates of the time, dated 1574. His son, Pieter Anthonie, was dean of the Guild of St. Luke at Bruges in 1607, and died in 1608.
Henrietta Mary Ada Ward
Historical genre painter.1852-1924