Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French pronunciation: /pjɛʁ oɡyst ʁənwaʁ/; Limoges, Haute-Vienne; February 25, 1841-Cagnes-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes; December 3, 1919) was a French impressionist painter, who in the second part of his career became interested in painting female bodies in landscapes, often inspired by classical Renaissance and Baroque paintings.
Renoir offers a more sensual interpretation of impressionism, more inclined to the ornamental and beauty. He does not usually influence the harshest of modern life, as Manet or Van Gogh sometimes did. He always kept one foot in tradition; He was related to the painters of the XVIII century who showed the gallant society of the Rococo, such as Watteau.
In his creations he shows the joy of living, even when the protagonists are workers. They are always characters having fun, in a pleasant nature. For this reason, he can be related to Henri Matisse, despite his different styles. He dealt with themes of flowers, sweet scenes of children and women, and above all the female nude, reminiscent of Rubens due to its thick forms. As for his style and technique, a strong influence from Corot can be seen in him.
Renoir possesses a vibrant and luminous palette that makes him a very special impressionist. The Box , The Swing , Dance at the Moulin de la Galette , Rowers' Lunch and The Large Bathers are the most representative works of him.
Biography
Childhood
Born into a humble family, he was the sixth of seven children born to tailor Léonard Renoir and seamstress Marguerite Merlet. In 1844, the Renoirs moved to Paris, where his father hoped to improve his financial situation. In 1848, he began attending a religious school run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Given his great ability for music theory, his teachers included him in the choir of young men of the church of Saint-Eustache, directed by the composer Charles Gounod. In 1854, he dropped out of school and was sent to the Lévy brothers' workshop to learn the art of porcelain painting. According to Edmond Renoir, his younger brother, his desire to forge an artistic career was already noticeable from his childhood, when Auguste drew on the walls with pieces of charcoal. The apprentice was taking a taste for the trade: at the end of the day, carrying a cardboard bigger than him, he attended free drawing classes. All this lasted two or three years. He showed rapid progress and, after a few months of apprenticeship, he was entrusted with regularly assigned jobs to experienced workers, which earned him more than a few mockery. Émile Laporte, one of the Lévy's workers, practiced oil painting for pleasure and allowed the young man to make use of his canvases and colors. After examining Auguste Renoir's first oil painting in the modest home of the Renoir on rue Argenteuil, Laporte advised his parents to allow him to study art painting, as it augured a promising future for him as a painter. Auguste Renoir never saw a handicap in his humble origins, and claimed that having been born into As intellectuals, it would have taken him years to get rid of his ideas and see things for what they were.
In the large courtyard of the Louvre, where the Renoirs lived not far from, little Auguste Renoir played cops and robbers with other boys. It was completely natural for him to enter the old royal palace converted into a famous museum after the Revolution, where he often entered the galleries of ancient sculpture to stay there for hours. However, the expeditions of the little Renoir were not limited to the surroundings of the Louvre. His organic and almost physical feeling, dating back to his childhood, of being part of the city will leave an imprint on his artwork. Renoir saw beauty in the narrow streets of medieval Paris, in the motley Gothic architecture, in the market vendors who never wore a corset, and for that very reason he suffered from the destruction of old Paris. His childhood and youth coincided with the beginning of the era of modernization and the great reconstructions of the city.
Youth
In 1858, at the age of 17, he painted fans and colored coats of arms for his brother Henri, a heraldic engraver. Probably in 1859, he worked for a time at the Gilbert house on the rue Bac, where he painted shutters of translucent paper that served as stained glass windows in the rudimentary chapels of the missionaries. During those years, he bought the necessary material for oil painting for professional use and made the first portraits of him. Among the Louvre archives, the authorization, dated 1861, that was granted to copy paintings in the museum's rooms is preserved. In 1862, Renoir passed the entrance exam to the School of Fine Arts. At the same time, he attended a free workshop taught by Charles Gleyre, a professor at that institution.
During this stage, he met those who would be his best friends and companions in art throughout his life in the Gleyre workshop. There a solid friendship was forged between him, Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley, who often went to paint together outdoors in the Fontainebleau woods. Bazille would be the first to summon his companions to meet in a group. However, this did not occur until after his death in combat during the Franco-Prussian War, so the young Bazille never had the opportunity to exhibit alongside the rest of the group and receive the title of "Impressionist." Renoir said that it was precisely he who had taken Sisley to his teacher's workshop, although it is possible that he was not correct and that Sisley had gotten there on his account. Renoir obtained outstanding results in the compulsory drawing, perspective, anatomy and similarity competitions, irrefutably demonstrating the fruitfulness of his years of work in Gleyre's studio.
The study period with Gleyre didn't last too long. In 1863, all the members of the group were forced to leave the workshop due to its closure, although Jean Renoir, Auguste's son, believes that his father had to leave even earlier, since she had no money to pay for her studies. He then began a period of poverty, but also of new encounters, discoveries in painting and new friendships.
Delacroix and Manet: early artistic influences
Unlike some of his friends, who advocated study from nature, Renoir found great inspiration in the Louvre and particularly in the work of Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix's death in 1863 made the young generation of French artists understand the importance that painting by the great romantic had for them. Renoir recognized in Delacroix's work something that was especially close to him.
In 1863, an important event shook the artistic life of the French capital. By order of Napoleon III, the Salon of the Rejected was opened outside the official Paris Salon, where Édouard Manet's Lunch on the Grass caused a great impact. From then on, his name was associated with the concept of modern art. In the mid-1860s, Manet frequented the Café Guerbois, on Rue Grande-des-Batignolles (present-day Avenue de Clichy). Manet's presence attracted artists, writers and critics sympathetic to the ideas of modern art to the Guerbois, Renoir and his friends, who had left the Left Bank, also came there.
Everyday life and first sources of inspiration
Life in Paris was not easy for the young artist. Lacking money, the help of his friends was of great importance to Renoir, who, without stable housing, sometimes resided in Monet's house, sometimes with Sisley. Bazille, better off than his comrades, rented a workshop where they could all work together.
Of course, in the Parisian region at the time, you could also find places to paint outdoors. Renoir did not travel very far since he lacked the means to do so, but in the environs of the French capital there was no shortage of sources of inspiration. So much so that it was there, around the town of Barbizon, that the pictorial school of the same name arose, of which Renoir and other impressionists felt they were direct heirs. The motifs of the Fontainebleau forest were inexhaustible and there were the favorite workplaces of Renoir and his friends. Monet and Renoir painted the River Seine, near the Chatou bridge, where, in the middle of a multitude of islets, in La Grenouillère, Alphonse Fournaise opened the restaurant that became one of the favorite places of the future Impressionists. Fournaise frequently refused Renoir's payment. In 1863, the Goncourt brothers mentioned in their Diary Marlotte's inn with its tastelessly painted vulgar room, a place that Renoir later represented around 1866 in Le cabaret de la mère Anthony.
They date from the same period The Sisleys (1868) and the Portrait of William Sisley (1864), father of the artist. Renoir and Bazille painted each other in the studio they shared. Renoir frequently represented Jules le Cœur, whom he sometimes visited at Marlotte. Some specialists in the Impressionist's work even consider that the standing figure in Mère Anthony's Cabaret is not Sisley, as is commonly believed, but Le Cœur.
Lise Tréhot: his first muse
Le Cœur secured a series of portrait orders for Renoir that would become his main source of income. Perhaps Le Cœur's most important impact on Renoir's work, however, was that it was through him that the artist met his first muse, Lise Tréhot, sister of Le Cœur's friend. heart.
Lise posed for the painter between 1865 and 1872, she became his friend and the first model of that particular world that the artist began to create. Lise came to establish itself as the canon of feminine beauty for the Renoir of that time. Renoir must have had a real gift for staging since all his subsequent paintings evoke a theatrical performance. During her youth, when Lise was her only actress, she attempted to capture on her own canvases the artistic experiences of all her masters, from the classical period to modern art. The apotheosis of this stage were her works painted in the spirit of Delacroix. It was precisely thanks to the legacy of the great romantic that the generation of artists to which Renoir belonged assimilated the acquisitions of his predecessors.
In 1870, he painted Odalisque (Woman from Algiers). To do so, he dressed Lise in fine silks and oriental brocade glittering with gold, covered her hair in orange plumage, and surrounded her with luxurious rugs. Two years later, in 1872, the artist returned to the theme, but the name he gave to his work designated his object with great sincerity: Interior of a harem in Montmartre (Parisians dressed as Algerians) . Lise posed again for said painting, but for the last time. The same year, she married the architect Georges Brière de l'Isle, a friend of Le Cœur.
Before meeting Lise, in 1864, he had exhibited one of her paintings at the Salon in the Grand Palais. It showed Esmeralda, a character from Victor Hugo's famous novel Our Lady of Paris , dancing with her goat around a bonfire that illuminated an entire town of rogues. Renoir destroyed the work immediately after the exhibition. The following year, the Portrait of William Sisley and a landscape were exhibited in the salon. In general, the works of the future Impressionists were not admitted to the Salon, despite the requests made to the jury by Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny, landscape painters of the older generation. However, Renoir had no contempt for the Salon. In 1867, the jury rejected Diana the Huntress. Instead, Lise with a Parasol was exhibited there in 1868. Also The Bather with the Griffon and Odalisque (Woman from Algiers) were made from a place in the Salon in subsequent years.
Maturity
Franco-Prussian War and the Cooperative Society
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On July 18, 1870, the tranquility of everyday life came to an abrupt end: France went to war with Prussia. Renoir, who knew nothing about horses, was assigned to the cavalry and sent to the remount depot, first in Bordeaux and then in Tarbes. The captain of the cavalry was very pleased with the painter's progress. Her daughter was passionate about painting and the artist gave her classes and, in turn, painted her portrait. However, this idyll ended sadly as Renoir became seriously ill and spent time in the Bordeaux hospital. In March 1871, he was demobilized and returned to Paris, to the Latin Quarter, where before the war he had rented an apartment with Bazille and later with Edmond Maître, a musician and lover of painting. There he learned of Bazille's death, which affected him more than the war itself. Renoir's stage as a horseman found a prolongation in his work. In 1873, he painted Horseback Riding in the Bois de Boulogne .
The official Salon rejected his painting, which would eventually be exhibited in the Salon of the Rejected, set up behind the Grand Palais. This episode put an end to Auguste Renoir's illusions regarding a possible commitment to the official Salon, mainly because it is in this period that the conviction of the need to make his painting official with his own exhibition matures in him and among his comrades.. The union of the artists, which Bazille and Pissarro had already fantasized about in the late 1860s, finally came to fruition.
The persistent rejection suffered by Renoir and his comrades by the official Salon jury made it difficult for them to sell their works. They had to display his paintings somewhere, but they had nowhere. The famous photographer Gaspard-Félix Tournachon lent them the place they needed to exhibit at number 35 Boulevard des Capuchins. The friends decided to call their association "Sociedad Anónima Cooperativa de Artistas, Pintores, Escultores, Engravers, etc.". They agreed that each member of the society would contribute a tenth of the income obtained from the sale of his works.
The first impressionist exhibition
First Impressionist Exhibition (1874)
They wanted to gather as many participants as possible for the exhibition. Edgar Degas sent invitations to James Tissot and Alphonse Legros, both London-based French artists, to exhibit with them. Manet was also invited, but he would reject the proposal. According to a certain version, Manet would have expressed that he would never exhibit with Paul Cézanne, but Renoir raised the matter in a somewhat different way: according to him, Manet found no reason to exhibit his work with them, the young, while his work did was accepted in the official Salon. In the end, neither Manet nor his friend Fantin-Latour, nor Tissot, nor Legros participated in the exhibition. Despite this, the group of friends managed to summon twenty-nine artists, who presented 165 works.
While most European and American critics derided the exhibition, going as far as calling it "comic" and incriminating its participants for wanting to wage war on beauty, its repercussions were particularly reverberant. Although not commercially successful, the image of each Impressionist was slowly beginning to take shape. Renoir exhibited six paintings and a pastel. The Dancer, The Parisian (or The Lady in Blue), large canvases for which Henriette Henriot, actress at the Odeon, had posed, and The Box ―also called The proscenium― captured the public's attention. In this last work, Nini became the representation of Renoir's portrait: no allusion to her situation, her character or her humor, only the charm of her porcelain skin, her subtly made-up lips and her elegant dress, in sum, of the fugitive grace of the Parisian.
Montmartre and new friends
The first exhibition of the Impressionists coincided with the moment when Renoir's vision of the painter was affirmed. This stage of his life was marked by a significant event: in 1873, he moved to Montmartre, where he would reside until 1884 at number 35 rue Saint-Georges. The artist would be faithful to that neighborhood until the end of his days, because there he would find his motifs in the open air, his models and even his family. It was also during those years that Renoir forged new friendships that he would keep for the rest of his life. The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was one of them. He began buying his work in 1872 and, although he was on the verge of bankruptcy at times, he never left the Impressionists to his fate. When he lacked the means to buy his paintings, he helped Renoir by giving him a certain amount of money each month.
In 1875, in an unsuccessful sale held at the Hotel Drouot in which Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Berthe Morisot participated, an official from the Customs Directorate named Victor Chocquet bought some paintings by Renoir. In this way he began another long friendship. Chocquet immediately commissioned the portrait of his wife. The official was one of the first to perceive that Renoir and his comrades were the direct heirs of the art of the XVIII century . For his part, Renoir considered Chocquet the greatest art collector in the entire country.
The years spent in Montmartre, around the 1870s, were probably the happiest in Renoir's artistic life. The neglected little garden near his workshop on Calle Cortot, leased in 1875, provided him with more than one outdoor motif that promoted the realization of his best paintings from this period. The same garden, where he regularly met with a friend of his, became the object of representation in his painting The Garden of Rue Cortot in Montmartre . There he painted The awning , The swing and Dance at the Moulin de la Galette , one of his most famous paintings. Renoir found his source of inspiration right next to his house, on the same Rue Cortot, in the Moulin de la Galette restaurant.
In Montmartre the artist met Anne, who would become his model for numerous canvases; to Angèle, who helped him rent the garden where the swing depicted in the painting of the same name was located; and, finally, to Margot who first appeared in Dance at the Moulin de la Galette , where she is seen dancing with a tall Spaniard, Pedro Vidal de Solares y Cárdenas, another friend of Renoir. Later, Margot would pose for a whole series of canvases, among which she knows how to highlight The Cup of Chocolate , accepted at the Salon in 1878, under the title Coffee . Afflicted by an incurable disease, Margot died in 1879 and her death had a profound impact on the painter.
In 1876, on the occasion of the second exhibition of the Impressionists, Renoir exhibited mainly portraits, since it was precisely with them that the artist tried to earn a living. His friends introduced him to potential clients. Along with some old fans of his work, they began to buy his financial cadres such as Henri Cernuschi and Charles Ephrussi. Eugène Murer, owner of a restaurant on Boulevard Voltaire, commissioned Renoir and Pisarro to paint his room. Every Wednesday, a large group of artists dined free at his restaurant. He also consigned Renoir portraits, including his own and his sister's. In September 1876, he was invited by the writer Alphonse Daudet to spend a month in his Champrosay residence, where Renoir portrayed fellow writer Julia Daudet.
In 1879, the painter met the diplomat Paul Bérard, who also became his friend and patron. In 1877, at the third exhibition of the Impressionists, Renoir exhibited more than twenty works, among which were landscapes painted in Paris, on the banks of the Seine, outside the city and in Monet's garden, studies of faces, of women and bouquets of flowers, the portraits of Sisley, the actress Jeanne Samary, the writer Alphonse Daudet and the politician Eugène Spuller, The Swing and Dance at the Moulin de la Galette. On the labels of some of these paintings one could read: "Property of Georges Charpentier." Renoir's association with the Charpentier family played a determining role in his fate. The artist worked assiduously to satisfy the requests of the Charpentiers.
Aline Charigot: his future wife
For the seventh exhibition of the Impressionists in 1882, Renoir exhibited twenty-five canvases thanks to the initiative of Paul Durand-Ruel, who lent him his own paintings. That same year, the painter began to worry about losing the success he had achieved in the Salons, since he now had a family to support. The story of her marriage began around 1880. At that time, the face of a young woman with round cheeks and a slightly upturned nose appears more and more frequently in Renoir's drawings and paintings. On occasions, her face can be seen among the crowds in Place Clichy, leaving a feeling of fleeting happiness. Other times, her presence can be guessed in the image of the red-haired girl reading, or in the flexible silhouette of a young woman getting on a boat. In The Rowers' Luncheon, from 1881, the young woman is depicted in profile in the lower left corner of the canvas, wearing a hat adorned with fashionable flowers and holding a Pekingese in both hands.
Her name was Aline Charigot; in 1880 she was 21 years old. Renoir met her at Madame Camille's creamery, opposite her house, on the Rue Saint-Georges. Aline lived with her mother right next door to her and she made her living as a seamstress. The mutual attraction between them was evident. Jean Renoir claimed that her father had begun painting her mother long before she met her. Indeed, in numerous paintings, such as The First Exit (1876-1877), her model was similar to Aline. At forty years old, the artist seemed to have found a new youth.
Travel and international recognition
In 1881 and 1882, Renoir changed places of work many times, which would remain reflected in his paintings as landscapes. He would continue painting on the banks of the Seine, in Chatou and in Bougival, places so dear to him that they led him to reject the invitation of the critic Thédore Duret to travel to England. However, in 1881 he visited Algeria for the first time accompanied by Frédéric Samuel Cordey. From there he brings The Banana Field and The Arab Festival . Later, he traveled to Italy, also for the first time, where he got to know Milan, Venice and Florence. Back in the south of France, Renoir worked with Cézanne, but contracted the flu and pneumonia at L'Estaque. Once cured, he returned to Algeria in March 1882. In May of that year, always with Aline in mind, he returned to Paris. It was the beginning of a new stage in his life. Supporting a family required means, but happily his work paid off: he received many commissions for portraits.
His clients included his old friend Paul Durand-Ruel. The dealer consigned him the portraits of his five children, three panels with the theme of dance and murals in his residence. In 1883, on the boulevard de la Madeleine, Durand-Ruel set up the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Renoir, in which seventy works were exhibited. Despite not having been very successful in selling the Impressionist paintings, the dealer decided to open a gallery in New York. During the 1880s, Renoir finally found success. He worked on commissions for wealthy financiers, including the owner of the Louvre Department Store and Senator Étienne Goujon. His paintings were exhibited in London, Brussels, and at the Seventh International Exhibition of Georges Petit (1886).
During those years, the artist traveled a lot. He frequently painted on the Normandy beaches. He toured the islands of Guernsey and Jersey with Aline and Paul Lhote. In March 1885, Pierre, his first child, was born. He paid the doctor who attended the birth by painting flowers on the walls of his apartment.In the autumn, the Renoirs left for Essoyes, in Champagne-Ardenne, Aline's hometown, where Renoir made several sketches of the mother of his child. breastfeeding. A year later, he painted from them Maternity (Aline and Pierre) .
The period I enter
In Renoir's artistic life, the 1880s were eventful. In his conversations with Ambroise Vollard, he mentioned that sense of dead end that had arisen around 1883. His dissatisfaction with the old Impressionist manner led the painter to adopt a new style. He felt that he did not know how to paint or draw. Depressed, he destroyed a whole series of canvases. In this difficult stage, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres came to his aid. Renoir's work during this decade falls within what is commonly known as the "Ingress period". This is a perceptible trend in all his paintings from this stage: a cleaner drawing and a more precise line, with a clear plasticity, as well as the use of local colors. Somehow, this trend can already be seen in The Rowers' Luncheon and even more so in Maternidad and in Los Umbrellas. This last painting, painted at two different times ―begun in 1881 and finished in 1885― attests to the evolution of the artist's style: soft and impressionistic on the right side, harsh and laconic on the left.
In Normandy, in 1884, Renoir painted the portrait of Paul Bérard's three daughters: Children's Afternoon at Wargemont. Purity of line and typical Ingres form aside, this canvas has the character of the Renoir of this period. Its range of blues and pinks refers to rococo painting and the 18th century. He was inspired by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Antoine Watteau, whose painting he had admired since his childhood. His great composition of him In the Garden , of 1885, marked his farewell to the permanent festival of La Grenouillère and the Moulin de la Galette. He left behind the trembling brushwork and the vibrations of light and shadow. In Renoir's new painting, everything is serene and stable.
Marriage
On April 14, 1890, the artist married Aline in the town hall of the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Jean, the couple's second child, was born in 1894. Gabrielle Renard, a cousin of Aline's, traveled from Essoyes to the French capital to help with household chores. She arrived at the Renoir house when Pierre was already older, so her main concern was Jean. The people of Montmartre got used to seeing Gabrielle carrying Jean on her back. Later, she would become one of the artist's favorite models.
The painter never enjoyed very good health. In his letters there are frequent mentions of respiratory diseases, which kept him bedridden for a long time. In 1888, at Essoyes, his face was partially paralyzed by neuralgia. In that same place, one rainy day in the summer of 1889, Renoir fell from his bicycle and fractured his right arm. Fortunately, as As a result of a previous fracture, the artist had already learned to paint with his left hand. However, this time pain appeared that made his work difficult. The family doctor diagnosed him with incurable rheumatism triggered by the fall. Throughout the last twenty years of his life, Renoir must have suffered permanent pain. Still, despite the fragility of his state, his fantastic thirst for life and creative passion did not quench.
During those same two decades, Renoir also experienced some great joys. In 1901, Claude was born, his third son, who would take the place of Jean, now grown, as a model. In 1900, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor and later, in 1911, an Officer. Paris, London and New York were the venues for exhibitions that crowned the triumph of his painting. In 1904, at the Second Exhibition of the Salon d'Automne, an entire room was dedicated to him.
In those years, the family traveled from the boulevard de Rochechouart in Paris to the Mediterranean coast and to small towns in the south of France in search of climatic conditions that would benefit the artist's health.
Transfer to Midi
In 1903, he moved with his family to Cagnes-sur-Mer, as the region's climate was more favorable to his state of health. After having known several residences in the old town, Renoir acquired the Domaine des Collettes, on a hillside to the east of Cagnes, to save the venerable olive trees whose shade he admired and which a potential buyer threatened to destroy. Aline Charigot had the house built there. her husband's last home, where she would spend her last days under the southern sun, well protected by her inseparable hat. He lives there with his wife Aline and his children, as well as his servants, often also with many friends, who help him in his everyday life, prepare his canvases and his brushes. The works of this period are essentially portraits, nudes, still lifes and mythological scenes. His paintings are brilliant, his more fluid pictorial material gains in transparency. Round, sensual female bodies glow with life. But disfiguring rheumatism gradually forced him to stop walking around 1905. On his property he painted in a studio that he erected in his garden in 1916, a few years before his death.
Renoir is now an important personality in the Western art world, exhibiting throughout Europe and the United States, participating in the Salons d'Automne in Paris. The material freedom that he acquired did not make him lose his sense of reality and his taste for simple things, he continued to paint in the rustic universe of the Domaine des Collettes. He tries new techniques, and in particular takes up sculpture, encouraged by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, although his hands are deformed by rheumatoid arthritis.
The painter Lucien Mignon was a close friend of Renoir's in Cagnes-sur-Mer and was influenced by his style. He also had close friends with Ferdinand Deconchy.
Last years
Gabrielle continued to sit for the painter, as well as other models who had become almost part of the family. One of the last models of him would be a young redhead named Andrée, whom Jean would later marry, after the death of his father. In the last years of his life, Renoir embraced the idea of a large composition made of nudes. By 1887, he had finished his painting The Large Bathers, whose style, somewhat harsh in the manner of Ingres, is characteristic of his work at the time. Female nudes appear in Large Nude (Nude on the cushions) (1907), Bather drying her leg (circa 1910), After the bath (1912), The Judgment of Paris (1913-1914), The Bathers (1918-1919), etc. Over the years, a taste for decorative painting, inspired by the great Italians, took root in him.
In 1915, the death of Aline plunged Renoir into solitude. His sons Pierre and Jean were wounded during the First World War. Despite everything, Renoir continued to paint until his death in 1919. On his deathbed, he would have asked for a canvas and brushes to paint the bouquet of flowers on the windowsill. Returning the brushes to the nurse for the last time, he is reported to have said, "I think I'm beginning to understand something about it."
Renoir died of pneumonia at the Domaine des Collettes on December 2, 1919, when he had just finished his last still life.
Initially, he was buried next to his wife in the old cemetery of the castle of Nice and, two and a half years later, on June 7, 1922, the remains of the Renoir couple were transferred to the Aube department where they rested. now in the Essoyes cemetery, as Renoir and his wife had wished. Since then, Pierre and Jean, and later the ashes of Dido Renoir, Jean's second wife, have shared their burial place.
Collaborative sculptures
From 1913 to 1918, in collaboration with Richard Guino, a young sculptor of Catalan origin who was introduced to him by Aristide Maillol and Ambroise Vollard, he created a set of important pieces: Vénus Victrix, le Jugement de Pâris, La Grande Laveuse , le Forgeron.
The attribution of these collaborative works was reviewed sixty years after their creation, following a long process begun in 1965 by Michel Guino, Richard's son and himself a sculptor, who worked to publicize his father's work. After a meticulous analysis of the pieces, the processes that governed their creation and the audience of many artists, Richard Guino was recognized as co-author in 1971 by the third civil chamber of the Paris court and this was definitively established by the Court of Cassation in 1973. The art historian Paul Haesaerts specified already in 1947 in Renoir sculpteur: "Guino was never simply an actor reading a text or a musician mechanically interpreting a score [...]. Guino was involved body and soul in the creative act. We can even say with certainty that if he had not been there, Renoir's sculptures would not have seen the light of day. Guino was indispensable”. The lawsuit filed by Guino's son was not filed "against" Renoir, a reduction that is transmitted in certain texts or newspaper articles that refer to the "matter." It was about helping to reveal the exceptional history of this creative process in order to recover Guino's original contribution to the sculptural work, initially hidden by Vollard. Guino transposes techniques: we go from Renoir's painting to Guino's sculpture, the spirit of painting shines through in the spirit of sculpture. Proven transmutation between two artists. The phenomenon could be achieved thanks to their friendship and their intense community of views. The painter before his canvases and the sculptor working with Collettes clay. It is this unique and rare point that characterizes these works.
After having interrupted his collaboration with Guino, he works with the sculptor Louis Morel (1887-1975), originally from Essoyes. Together they make terracottas, two dancers and a flutist.
Quotes
For me, a painting must be kind, joyful and beautiful, yes, beautiful. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to invent more.Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
My existence has been exactly the opposite of what should have been [...] I have been represented as a revolutionary to me, who I am the oldest in all painters.Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Outstanding works
- The cabaret de la mère Anthony (1866), Stockholm National Museum (Stockholm, Sweden)
- The painter Jules Le Cœur in the forest of Fontainebleau (1866), São Paulo Art Museum (São Paulo, Brazil)
- Diana hunter (1867), National Art Gallery (Washington D. C., United States)
- Lise (woman with parasol) (1867), Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany)
- Marriage Sisley (1868), Wallraf-Richartz Museum (Colonia, Germany)
- In summer (1868)
- The clown (1868), Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo, Netherlands)
- La Grenouillère (1869), Stockholm National Museum (Stockholm, Sweden)
- The bather with the faucet (1870), São Paulo Art Museum (São Paulo, Brazil)
- Mrs. Clémentine Valensi Stora (The Algerian) (1870), San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts (San Francisco, United States)
- Odalisca (German of Algiers) (1870), National Art Gallery (Washington D. C., United States)
- The walk (1870), J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, United States)
- Interior of harem in Montmartre (Parisins dressed as Algerians) (1872), National Museum of Western Art (Tokyo, Japan)
- Semi-denizen woman lying down: the rose (about 1872), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- Horseback riding in the forest of Boulogne (1873), Kunsthalle de Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
- The box (1874), Courtlaud Institute Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
- The Parisian (1874), National Museum of Wales (Cardiff, United Kingdom)
- Reading paper (1874-1876), Reims Museum of Fine Arts (Reims, France)
- Lovers (about 1875), National Gallery of Prague (Praga, Czech Republic)
- Woman with cat (about 1875), National Art Gallery (Washington D.C., United States)
- The awning (Under the trees of the Moulin de la Galette) (about 1875), Pushkin Museum (Moscow, Russia)
- Torso, sun effect (1875-1876), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- The swing (1876), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- Naked woman sitting (Anna's Torso) (1876), Pushkin Museum (Moscow, Russia)
- Cortot Street Garden in Montmartre (1876), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, United States)
- The first step (1876), particular collection
- Landscape and nude studies(hacia 1900), Soumaya Museum (Mexico City, Mexico).
- Black woman (about 1876), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)
- Young woman sitting (Thought) (1876-1877), Barber Institute of Fine Arts (Birmingham, United Kingdom)
- The first exit (1876-1877), National Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
- Jeanne Samary (1877), Comédie-Française (Paris, France)
- Jeanne Samary in scorched dress (1877), Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
- The exit of the conservatory (1877), Barnes Foundation (Merion, United States)
- Portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary (1878), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)
- Landscape on the banks of the Seine (1879), Baltimore Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland, United States)
- Girl sleeping with cat (1880), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, United States)
- Clichy Square (about 1880), Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
- Merry lunch (1880-1881), Phillips Collection (Washington D. C., United States)
- Blonde girl (1881), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, United States)
- On the terrace (1881), Chicago Institute of Art.
- The umbrellas (1881-1885), National Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
- Marie-Thérèse Durand-Ruel sewing (1882), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, United States)
- Naked woman in a landscape (1883) Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- The braid (Suzanne Valadon) (1884-1886), Museum Langmatt (Baden, Switzerland)
- The big bathers (1884-1887), Philadelphia Art Museum (Filadelfia, United States)
- Maternity (Aline and Pierre) (1886), particular collection
- Young woman bathing (1888), particular collection
- Girl with margaritas (1889), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States)
- Piano girls (1892), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- Bañista with long hair (1895), Orangerie Museum (Paris, France)
- Yvonne and Christine Lerolle piano (1897), Orangerie Museum (Paris, France)
- The Sleeper (1897), Oskar Reinhart Collection «Am Römerholz» (Winterthur, Switzerland)
- Landscape of Britain (1902)
- Naked woman lying down (1906-1907), Orangerie Museum (Paris, France)
- Great nude (Number on Paddles) (1907), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
- Coco bust (1907-1908)
- Gabrielle with jewelry (1910), particular collection
- Bañista drying his leg (hacia 1910), São Paulo Art Museum (São Paulo, Brazil)
- Gabrielle with rose (1911), Museum of Orsay (Paris, France)
- After the bath (1912), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland)
- The Judgment of Paris (1913-1914), Hiroshima Art Museum (Hiroshima, Japan)
- The bathers (1918-1919), Orsay Museum (Paris, France)
Mère Anthony's Cabaret (1866)
It is an Oil on canvas, which is currently in the Nationalmuseum (Stockholm, Sweden). On a large canvas two meters high, where Renoir painted a scene from real life. In the work, carried out in the house of Mère Anthony, Alfred Sisley can be seen standing and Camille Pissarro from behind. The beardless man is Frank Lamy. In the background, from behind, you can make out Mrs. Anthony and in the foreground on the left, the maid Nana. It is a remarkable composition: the figures of the waitress and the seated man, cut from the sides of the canvas, and the group of characters that form almost a semicircle, create a sensation of real space. From then on, Renoir's friends will always appear in his paintings. The coloring of his painting has not yet become clear, in the style of the Impressionists, but is rather reminiscent of the bitumen tones of Gustave Courbet or resembles the brownish colors of Henri Fantin-Latour's group, which in turn evoke the old photographs of the XIX century.
Horse ride in the Bois de Boulogne (1873)
Oil on canvas, 261 × 226 cm, Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany). It was the wife of Captain Darras, Madame Henriette Darras, who posed for the figure of the beautiful horsewoman and the son of the architect Charles Le Cœur for that of the boy riding the pony. This painting reveals two typical features of Renoir's style. First, the artist could not resist the charm of the Parisian woman, whose skin does not reflect light, with the elegance of the black veil and the rose attached to Renoir's suit veil colour. Second, a range of very light colors blends the figures in the foreground with the landscape into a harmonious whole.
The Box (1874)
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Oil on canvas, 80 × 63.5 cm, Courtlaud Institute Gallery, London, UK. The art critic Philippe Burty wrote about it that "the feigned and impassive figure of the lady, her white-gloved hands, one of which holds a pair of cufflinks and the other drowned in the muslin of the kerchief, the head and bust of the turning man, are fragments of paint." both worthy of attention and praise." For the first time, Renoir spread a harmonious and free wave of light color on canvas in a composition worthy of the lessons of the classical masters. The painting evokes vague reminiscences of Caravaggio's compositions, but even more of The Balcony by Edouard Manet. Renoir had learned from them and made his own way.
Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876)
Oil on canvas, 131 × 175 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. As always, the characters in his painting are close friends. On the right, at the small table, one can recognize Frank Lamy, Norbert Gœneutte and Georges Rivière; among the dancers, Lestringuez and Paul Lhote. In the center, in the foreground, are two sisters, Estelle and Jeanne, whom Renoir had met in Montmartre, like most of his models of those years. The artist painted a scene known to the inhabitants of the neighborhood: that of a ball at the Moulin de la Galette. The liveliness of his style and the patches of light and shadow create a cheerful and natural atmosphere.Georges Rivière, in his article for the newspaper The Impressionist , approached this canvas from a rather unexpected perspective:
Certainly Renoir has every right to be proud of his Dance: I've never been better inspired. It is a history page, a beautiful monument of Parisian life, of rigorous accuracy.
- No one before he had thought of pointing the facts of everyday life into a fabric of such wide dimensions; it is a boldness whose success will reward as it should be. This work has, for the future, an importance that we see in the obligation to point out: it is a historical picture.
Landscape of Brittany (1902)
Renoir's work confirms that he traveled through Gallic territory. It is evident that each landscape gave him new possibilities of creation. It was Brittany, a region in northwest France, formerly identified as the Armorican peninsula or Land of the Sea, that inspired Renoir in Landscape in Brittany, a work that is part of the Soumaya Museum collection. In the work, the artist uses different shades of green, using certain touches of bright red which contrast harmoniously in the composition. His work is a record of the beauty of everyday life.