Renoir, Pierre-Auguste

Biography

Born in Limoges in 1841, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the most brilliant representatives of French Impressionism. From the age of 14, he was introduced to porcelain painting by his father. He then trained in Charles Gleyre's studio, alongside Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. An avant-garde artist, he took part in the very first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, exhibiting six paintings, including his masterpiece La Loge (1874, Courtauld Institute). Yet by the early 1880s, Renoir's style and technique had become so assertive that André Lhote even described him as an "anti-impressionist painter". Fascinated by the works of Raphael discovered in the Vatican and the great French masters (such as François Girardon, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres), he turned to a more classical style of painting (Large Bathers, 1887). In 1892, Paul Durand-Ruel organized a private exhibition of 110 paintings by Renoir, which was a huge success. The French government purchased Young girls at the piano. Stricken with paralysis of both hands and legs in 1912, Renoir continued to work relentlessly, brush in hand, until his death in 1919. Prior to this, in 1913, Renoir decided to take up sculpture at the instigation of his dealer Ambroise Vollard. Vollard entrusted sculptor Richard Guino with the task of being "Renoir's hands" and bringing the artist's visions to life. What followed was an intense collaboration between the two men, giving rise to such emblematic works as La Grande Laveuse or Venus Victrix. Throughout his life, Renoir's work would transcend his early influences to develop a resolutely original aesthetic, central to the history of painting. He died in Cagnes-sur-Mer on December 3, 1919.