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 :. | Meeting in the Garden | Vicor Chocquet | Jeanne Samary | Madame Renoir and her Son Pierre | Coco Playing |
Related Artists:
fritz von dardel
Fritz Ludvig von Dardel, född den 24 mars 1817 i Neuchâtel, död den 27 maj 1901 i Stockholm, var en schweiziskfödd svensk överintendent, militär, målare och tecknare. Fritz von Dardel var son till godsägaren Georges-Alexandre von Dardel och grevinnan Hedvig Sofia Charlotta Amalia Lewenhaupt. Han var gift med friherrinnan Augusta Silfverschiöld. Släkten von Dardel kommer från Schweiz och adlades i Sverige 1810. Von Dardel blev vid sexton års ålder konstapelkadett vid Vendes artilleriregemente, 1837 underlöjtnant vid Svea livgarde och avancerade till överstelöjtnant i armen 1862. Han blev 1850 adjutant hos kronprinsen och sedan hos Karl XV. Von Dardel var 1858-62 militärattach?? i Paris samt blev 1864 kabinettskammarherre hos Karl XV och samma år överintendent och ordföranden i Akademin för de fria konsterna, av vilken han 1861 invalts till hedersledamot. Dessutom var han ordförande i Nationalmuseums nämnd i 25 år (1867-92). Vid flera konstutställningar i Europa (1867, 1871, 1873 och 1878) samt i Philadelphia (1876) var han juryman. Själv hade von Dardel bedrivit studier på L??on Cogniets och E. Lamis ateljeer i Paris. Fritz von Dardel tillhörde Karl XV:s intima krets och har gjort ett flertal dråpliga, akvarellerade teckningar av personer och händelser vid hovet eller under kungens resor, vidare folklivsbilder samt litografier. Hans dagböcker (se nedan) som utgavs postumt är skrivna på franska och översatta och redigerade av hans söner.
William Ellery Channing
(April 7, 1780 - October 2, 1842) was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day.
Gustave Le Gray
French Photographer, 1820-1884,French photographer, painter and teacher. He studied painting with Paul Delaroche until 1843. A study trip to Switzerland and Italy, financed by his parents, followed, but it was cut short by an untimely marriage in 1844, his sudden return to his family's home and the subsequent birth of two children in 1845 and 1846. Skilled in painting as an experimenter with pigments, he was attracted to the experimental side of the new paper negative processes available in France after 1847 and plunged into photography, probably to finance the burdens of the family life newly thrust upon him. His treatise, Trait? pratique de photographie sur papier et sur verre (1850), outlined his own variant of the dry waxed paper negative process using thinner paper, as well as a recipe for collodion on glass negatives rivalling that of the English inventor Frederick Scott Archer (see PHOTOGRAPHY,