Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a major French Impressionist painter. Critics have called him "the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau," especially in his treatment of feminine beauty. His sons included actor Pierre Renoir, filmmaker Jean Renoir, and ceramic artist Claude Renoir; his grandson, also named Claude Renoir, was a filmmaker.

Renoir was born in Limoges, France, to a tailor of modest means. In 1844 his family moved to Paris, settling on rue d'Argenteuil near the Louvre. Though he showed a natural talent for drawing, his singing ability was stronger, and his teacher Charles Gounod, choirmaster at the Church of St Roch, encouraged him. But money was tight, so at thirteen Renoir left school and began an apprenticeship at a porcelain factory. He often grew bored with the work and spent time in the Louvre galleries. The factory owner noticed his skill and told his family, leading Renoir to take lessons for entry into the École des Beaux Arts. When the factory switched to mechanical reproduction in 1858, he had to find other ways to support his studies, including painting hangings for missionaries and decorating fans.

In 1862 he studied under Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. During the 1860s he sometimes couldn’t afford paint. His first Salon success came in 1868 with *Lise with a Parasol*, a portrait of his lover Lise Tréhot. He had begun exhibiting at the Salon in 1864, but recognition came slowly, partly due to the Franco-Prussian War. During the Paris Commune in 1871, while painting by the Seine, some Communards mistook him for a spy and were about to throw him in the river until a leader, Raoul Rigault, recognized him as someone who had once protected him. In 1874 a decade-long friendship with Jules Le Cœur and his family ended, costing Renoir a valued patron and a place to paint near Fontainebleau, which shifted his subject matter.

Renoir admired the style and subjects of Camille Pissarro and Édouard Manet. After repeated Salon rejections, he joined Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and others for the First Impressionist Exhibition in April 1874, showing six paintings. The exhibition was poorly received, but Renoir’s work fared relatively well. That year two of his pieces were shown in London by Paul Durand-Ruel. Hoping to earn a living through portrait commissions, he exhibited mostly portraits at the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876. The following year he contributed a wider range, including *Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette* and *The Swing*. He skipped the fourth and fifth Impressionist exhibitions, returning to the Salon. By the late 1870s, especially after the success of *Mme Charpentier and her Children* at the 1879 Salon, he was fashionable and successful. That year he met his future main patron, Paul Bérard, who often invited him to paint at the Château de Wargemont in Normandy.

In 1881 he traveled to Algeria, which he associated with Eugène Delacroix, then to Madrid to see Diego Velázquez’s work, and to Italy to view Titian’s paintings in Florence and Raphael’s in Rome. On 15 January 1882 he met composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo and painted his portrait in thirty-five minutes. Later that year he caught pneumonia, which permanently damaged his lungs, and convalesced for six weeks in Algeria. In 1883 he spent over a month in Guernsey, painting fifteen works, mostly of Moulin Huet bay; these later appeared on Guernsey postage stamps in 1983. In Montmartre he employed Suzanne Valadon as a model, who posed for *The Large Bathers* and *Dance at Bougival* and later became a leading painter. In 1887, for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, he donated several paintings to a catalog of French Impressionist works. He married Aline Victorine Charigot, a dressmaker twenty years his junior, in 1890.