Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Femme en promenade, 1890

Pierre-Auguste Renoir demonstrated affinity toward portraiture, evidenced by its prevalence in and importance to his oeuvre.

He had a range of patrons, and in fact, his success and resultant legacy as an artist is intimately tied to his penchant for depicting women and children.

In the Paris Salon of 1879, he exhibited a family portrait of Madame Charpentier titled Portrait de Madame Charpentier et ses enfants.

Madame Charpentier was the wife of the publisher of Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and the Goncourt brothers, and this initial work spurred his popularity and resulted in an increasing number of portrait commissions following its public exhibition.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Femme en promenade, 1890 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Guernsey, 1883

Between late summer and early autumn of 1883, Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent over a month on the Channel Island of Guernsey, lodging at no. 4 of George Road, St. Peter Port.

The beach of Moulin Huet, and the nearby bay at the east end of the island's rocky south coast within walking distance from his lodgings, provided the inspiration for approximately fifteen paintings, including Rochers de Guernesey avec personnages (plage à Guernesey), alongside Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey (in the National Gallery, London) and Enfants au bord de la mer Guernsey (in the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania).

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Rochers de Guernesey avec personnages (plage à Guernesey), 1883 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881

The corner of the balcony visible at lower left in this composition indicates Renoir’s vantage point overlooking the bay of Naples.

His position afforded an iconic view of the harbor with the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the background, wafting smoke into the sky.

Inspired by the southern Italian light, Renoir painted another version of this vista at a different time of day (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.).

James Duncan, a wealthy sugar refiner, purchased the present work in 1883, making it the first Impressionist picture acquired by a Scottish collector.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "La mia Italia" | Le lettere..

Italia, autunno 1881.

Alla signora Charpentier,

Dovevo pranzare un mattino con voi, e mi avrebbe fatto infinitamente piacere, perché è già passato tanto tempo.

Ma sono diventato improvvisamente viaggiatore e mi ha preso la febbre di vedere Raffaello .

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Un jardin à Sorrente, 1881 | Sotheby's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Pan’s Party, 1879

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this florid allegorical canvas, La fête de Pan, in the summer of 1879.

Commissioned to adorn the drawing room of the Bérard family’s country home, the Château de Wargemont, La fête de Pan depicts a spring festival devoted to the ancient Greek god, Pan - a rare example of a mythological subject in Renoir’s oeuvre.

This jubilant painting combines the artist’s careful observations of nature en plein air with his imaginative fantasies of beauty, both feminine and floral.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895

"I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch", Renoir wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888, full of enthusiasm for his latest efforts.

"This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting - like Fragonard, but not so good" (quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121).

Renoir's new approach represented a sea-change after the controversial Ingres-inspired method he cultivated in the previous decade.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille, 1882

Painted in 1882, "Tête de jeune fille" dates from a key period of transition within Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s career.

It was at the beginning of that year that the pioneering Impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had begun to purchase Renoir’s work, granting the artist a new level of professional and financial security, which in turn enabled him to travel abroad for the first time.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille, 1882 | Christie's

René Magritte | The “Renoir” period, 1940-1947

- "For the period I call 'Surrealism in full sunlight', I am trying to join together two mutually exclusive things: one, a feeling of levity, intoxication, happiness, which depends on a certain mood and on an atmosphere that certain Impressionists, or rather, Impressionism in general, have managed to render in painting.

Without Impressionism, I do not believe we would know this feeling of real objects perceived through colours and nuances, and free of all classical reminiscences... and, two, a feeling of the mysterious quality of objects" - René Magritte.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Wave / L'Onda, 1882

Each summer between 1879 and 1882 Pierre-Auguste Renoir traveled to Wargemont near Dieppe on the Normandy coast to visit his friend and patron Paul Bérard.

Renoir and Bérard, a banker and French diplomat, had met in 1878, when the artist was still struggling to find collectors for his Impressionist canvases.

Renoir and Bérard quickly formed a bond, leading to numerous commissioned portraits of the financier’s children and affording the artist a comfortable place to go for the summer well removed from the oppressive heat of Paris.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Wave, 1882 | Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, United States

Happy Birthday Renoir! Was born in February 25 - 181 years ago!

Pierre-Auguste Renoir born in February 25, 181 years ago in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France who was the leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style.

After years as a struggling painter, Renoir helped launch an artistic movement called Impressionism in 1870s.

Unlike most artists Renoir painted quickly - some of his work took only half an hour.

He eventually became one of the most highly regarded artists of his time. He died in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, in 1919.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Impressionist painter

Famed for his sensual charming scenes of pretty women, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a far more complex and thoughtful painter than generally assumed.

He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, nevertheless he ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877.

From the 1880s until well into the twentieth century, he developed a monumental, classically inspired style that influenced such avant-garde giants as Pablo Picasso.

Renoir at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Famed for his sensual figures and charming scenes of pretty women, Pierre Auguste Renoir was a far more complex and thoughtful painter than generally assumed.

He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, nevertheless he ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877.

From the 1880s until well into the twentieth century, he developed a monumental, classically inspired style that influenced such avant-garde giants as Pablo Picasso.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Models

Pierre-Auguste Renoir loved women.

Most of his subjects were female, often women who were relatives, friends and lovers. Even his son was frequently dressed up as a little girl, appearing in a lovable and innocent manner in his paintings.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "I grandi uomini sono modesti”!

• "Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and, second, it must be inimitable".

• "Vuoi sapere quali sono le due qualità di un'opera d'arte? In primo luogo, deve essere indescrivibile e, in secondo luogo, deve essere inimitabile".

• "I grandi uomini sono modesti".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Renoir | Landscapes with Figures

• "If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself" - Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
• "Se dipingi la foglia su un albero senza usare un modello, la tua immaginazione ti fornirà solo poche foglie; ma la natura ti offre milioni, tutti sullo stesso albero. Non ci sono due foglie esattamente uguali. L'artista che dipinge solo ciò che ha in mente deve ben presto ripetersi" - Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Artworks

Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions.

The female figure was one of his primary subjects. However, in 1876, a reviewer in Le Figaro wrote "Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with those purplish green stains that denote a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse".

Yet in characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of colour, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.

L'uomo Renoir

Il figlio di Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Jean Renoir, offre un ritratto fisiognomico e caratteriale assai dettagliato del padre, delineandone anche le abitudini vestiarie e lo sguardo indice del suo carattere al contempo tenero ed ironico:

«Mio padre aveva qualcosa di un vecchio arabo e molto di un contadino francese, con la differenza che la sua pelle, sempre protetta dal sole per la necessità di tenere la tela fuori dai riflessi ingannatori, era rimasta chiara come quella di un adolescente. Quel che colpiva gli estranei che s’incontravano con lui per la prima volta erano gli occhi e le mani.

Gli occhi erano di un marrone chiaro, tendente al giallo; aveva una vista acutissima.

Spesso ci indicava all’orizzonte un rapace che sorvolava la valle della Cagnes, o una coccinella che si arrampicava lungo un filo d’erba nascosto fra gli altri fili d’erba.

Renoir: "La fotografia ha liberato la pittura da molte faccende noiose.."

• "The only way to understand painting is to go and look at it. And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums".

• "L'unico modo per capire la pittura è andare a guardarla. E se su un milione di visitatori ce n'è anche uno per cui l'arte significa qualcosa, questo è sufficiente per giustificare i musei".

• "Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits".

• "La fotografia ha liberato la pittura da molte faccende noiose, a cominciare dai ritratti di famiglia".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Portraits

• "The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion".
• "L'opera d'arte deve afferrarti, avvolgerti in se stesso e portarti via. È il mezzo con cui l'artista trasmette la sua passione. È la corrente che egli emette che ti trascina nella sua passione".

- Pierre Auguste Renoir

Renoir / Emily Dickinson | It will be Summer / Sarà estate

It will be Summer -eventually.

Ladies -with parasols -

Sauntering Gentlemen -with Canes

- And little Girls -with Dolls -

Will tint the pallid landscape -

As ‘twere a bright Boquet -

Tho drifted deep, in Parian -

The Village lies - today -