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 Ball at the Moulin de la Galette | Pierre-Henri Renoir or the Artist's brother | Child with Toys(Gabrielle and Jean) | Madam Charpentier Children | Seated Young Girl(Helene Bellon) |
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Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence
b.Jan. 8, 1836, Dronrijp, Netherlands. d.June 25, 1912, Wiesbaden, Germany. Painter and designer of Dutch birth. The son of a notary, Alma-Tadema demonstrated an early artistic ability. In 1852 he entered the Antwerp Academy, where he studied under Gustaf, Baron Wappers, and Nicaise de Keyser. An important influence at this time was Louis De Taye, Professor of Archaeology at the academy and a practising artist. Alma-Tadema lived and worked with De Taye from 1857 to 1859 and was encouraged by him to depict subjects from the early history of France and Belgium. This taste for historical themes increased when Alma-Tadema entered Baron Henri Leys studio in 1859 and began assisting him with his monumental frescoes for the Antwerp Town Hall. While in Leys studio, Alma-Tadema produced several major paintings, for example the Education of the Children of Clovis (1861; ex-Sir John Pender priv. col., see Zimmern, p. 3) and Venantius Fortunatus Reading his Poems to Radagonda (1862; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Mus.), which are characterized by their obscure Merovingian subject-matter, rather sombre colouring and close attention to detail.
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam
(June 9 1597 - buried May 31 1665) was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors. Saenredam was born in Assendelft, the son of the Northern Mannerist printmaker and draughtsman Jan Pietersz Saenredam (1565-1607), a follower of Goltzius whose sensuous naked goddesses are in great contrast with the work of his son. In 1612 he moved to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Frans de Grebber and lived for the rest of his life. In 1614 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He died in Haarlem. A contemporary of the painter-architects Jacob van Campen, Salomon de Bray, and Pieter Post, he is noted for his surprisingly modern paintings of church interiors, the great bulk of his production. Saenredam achieved this modern look by using very even light, subtlely modulated, and by removing detailed depiction of textures, in meticulously measured and drawn sketches. He would make these sketches in pencil, pen, and chalk, then and add in watercolor to help give the sketch texture and color. The sketches are detailed, conveying the interior atmosphere through the clever use of light and graduated shadows. Saenredam often deliberately omitted people and church furniture from work, thus focusing more attention on buildings and their architectural forms. Only after having made precise measurements, and precise sketches and drawings of the churches, he would take them to his studio where he started to create his paintings, often after a delay of many years. His emphasis on even light and geometry is brought out by comparing his works with those of the rather younger Emanuel de Witte, who included people, contrasts of light and such clutter of church furniture as remained in Calvinist churches, all usually ignored by Saenredam. Unlike de Witte's, Saenredam's views are usually roughly aligned with a main axis of the church.
John Cecil Clay
Illustrator and genre, caricature painter American 1875-1930 American illustrator known for genre and caricature paintings. Clay was born in Ronceverte, West Virginia to an long-time Southern family. He was a student of Henry Siddons Mowbray at the Art Students League of New York and had a graphic style that was suited to illustration. A reoccurring subject was pretty young women. During his life he worked for Life and Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. He was a member of Society of Illustrators and was represented at the St. Louis Exposition-World's Fair 1904. Apart from the above mentioned magazines he also worked as an illustrator for The Century Magazine, Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping.