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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Limoges, France
died December 3, 1919, Cagnes
French painter originally associated with the Impressionist
movement. His early works 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.
Early years
Renoir was born into a family of artisans. His father, a tailor who
had seven children, moved with his family to Paris about1845. Renoir
demonstrated his gift at an early age. Quickly recognizing his
talent, his parents apprenticed him, at age 13, to work in a
porcelain factory, where he learned to decorate plates with bouquets
of flowers. Shortly after that, he was painting fans and then cloth
panels representing religious themes for missionaries to hang in
their churches. His skill and the great pleasure he took in his work
soon convinced him he should study painting in earnest. Having saved
a little money, he decided, in 1862, to take evening courses in
drawing and anatomy at the École des Beaux-Artsas well as painting
lessons at the studio of Charles Gleyre, a Swiss painter who had
been a student of the 19th-century Neoclassical painter J.-A.-D.
Ingres. Although the academic style of his teacher did not suit
Renoir, he nevertheless accepted its discipline in order to acquire
the elementary skills needed to become a painter.
Renoir felt a much greater affinity with three students who entered
the studio a few months later: Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, and
Frédéric Bazille. All four students dreamed of an art that was
closer to life and free from past traditions. The shared ideals of
the four young men quickly led to a strong friendship, and Renoir's
early works include Portrait of the Painter Bazille (1867), The
Painter Sisley and His Wife (1868), and Monet Painting in His Garden
(1873). At the sametime in another workshop at the Académie Suisse,
the young artists Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro were preoccupied
with the same problems as Renoir and his friends. With Bazille as
the intermediary, the two groups met frequently.
Association with the Impressionists
Circumstances encouraged Renoir to attempt a new freedom and
experimentation in his style. The convention of the time was that a
painting—even a landscape—had to be executed in the studio. In the
spring of 1864, however, Gleyre's four students moved temporarily to
the forest of Fontainebleau, where they devoted themselves to
painting directly from nature. The Fontainebleau forest had earlier
attracted other artists, among them Théodore Rousseau and
Jean-François Millet, who insisted that art represent the reality of
everyday life, even though they had not yet completely renounced the
constraints imposed by traditional training. In 1863 Édouard Manet
took a much bolder step: his picture Déjeuner sur l'herbe (“Luncheon
on the Grass”) provoked a violent scandal because its subject and
technique stressed the observation of modern reality over the
repetition of a traditional ideal. Manet's daring made him, in the
eyes of these young artists, the leader of a new movement.
Conditions were ripe for the birth of a new pictorial language,and
Impressionism, bursting upon the scene, attracted notoriety with the
first Impressionist exposition of 1874, heldindependently of the
official Salon. It took 10 years for the movement to acquire its
definitive form, its independent vision, and its unique
perceptiveness. But one can point to 1874 as the year of departure
for the movement that subsequently spawned modern art.
Renoir's work is a perfect illustration of this new approach in
thought and technique. By using small, multicoloured strokes, he
evoked the vibration of the atmosphere, the sparkling effect of
foliage, and especially the luminosity of a young woman's skin in
the outdoors. Renoir and his companions stubbornly strove to produce
light-suffused paintings from which black was excluded, but their
pursuits led to many disappointments: their paintings, so divergent
from traditional formulas, were frequently rejected by the juries of
the Salon and were extremely difficult to sell. Despite the
continuing criticism, some of the Impressionists were making
themselves known, as much among art critics as among the lay public.
Renoir, because of his fascination with the human figure, was
distinctive among the others, who were more interested in landscape.
Thus, he obtained several orders for portraits and was introduced,
thanks to thepublisher Georges Charpentier, to upper-middle-class
society, from whom he obtained commissions for portraits, most
notably of women and children.
Renoir mastered the ability to convey his immediate visual
impressions, and his paintings showed great vitality, emphasizing
the pleasures of life despite the financial worries that troubled
him. Several of his masterpieces date from this period: La Loge
(1874; “The Theatre Box”), Le Moulin de la galette (1876), The
Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), and Mme Charpentier and Her
Children (1878). Charpentier organized a personal exposition for the
works of Renoir in 1879 in the gallery La Vie Moderne.
Rejection of Impressionism
In 1881 and 1882 Renoir made several trips to Algeria, Italy, and
Provence, and these eventually had a considerable effect on his art
and on his life. He became convinced that the systematic use of the
Impressionistic technique was no longer sufficient for him and that
smallbrushstrokes of contrasting colours placed side by side did not
allow him to convey the satiny effects of the skin. He also
discovered that black did not deserve the opprobrium given to it by
his comrades and that, in certain cases, it hada striking effect and
gave a great intensity to the other colours. During his journey to
Italy, he discovered Raphael and the hallmarks of classicism: the
beauty of drawing, the purity of a clear line to define a form, and
the expressive force of smooth painting when used to enhance the
suppleness and modeling of a body. At this same time, he happened to
read Il libro dell'arte (1437; A Treatise on Painting ) by Cennino
Cennini, which reinforced his new ideas. All of these revelations
were so powerful and unexpected that they provoked a crisis, and he
was tempted to break with Impressionism, which he had already begun
to doubt. He felt that until now he had been mistaken in pursuing
the ephemeral in art.
Most of his works executed from 1883 to 1884 on are so marked by a
new discipline that art historians have grouped them under the title
the “Ingres” period (to signify their vague similarity to the
technique of J.-A.-D. Ingres) or the “harsh,” or “dry,” period.
Renoir's experiments with Impressionism were not wasted, however,
because he retained a luminous palette. Nevertheless, in paintings
from this period, such as The Umbrellas (c. 1883) and many
depictions of bathers, Renoir emphasized volume, form, contours, and
line rather than colour and brushstroke.
His strong reaction against Impressionism continued until about
1890. During these years he made several trips to southern France:
Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, and Martigues. The nature of this sunlit
region gave greater encouragement to his separation from
Impressionism, which to him was associated with the landscapes of
the valley of the Seine. Southern France offered him scenes bursting
with colour and sensuality. At the same time, the seemingly joyous
spontaneity of nature gave him the desire to depart from his
newfound adherence to the dictates of classicism. While in southern
France, he recovered the instinctive freshness of his art; he
painted women at their bath with the same healthful bloom he would
give to bouquets of flowers.
His financial situation was appreciably improved; he was married in
1890 to Aline Charigot (some sources give the year as 1881), and the
exposition that was organized for him in 1892 by the dealer Paul
Durand-Ruel was a great success. Renoir's future was assured, and
his work of that period reflected his new security and also his
confidence in the future.
Later years
Renoir had his first attack of rheumatism in 1894, and, as the
attacks became more and more frequent, he spent more and more time
in southern France, where the climate was better for his health.
About 1899 he sought refuge in the small village of Cagnes; in 1907
he settled there permanently, buying the estate of Les Collettes,
where he spent the rest of his life. In 1910 he was no longer able
to walk. Although his infirmity became more and more constraining,
Renoir never ceased to paint; when his fingerswere no longer supple,
he continued by binding his paintbrush to his hand.
In spite of his misfortune, Renoir's paintings during this period
still embodied a cheerful attitude toward life. His themes became
more personal and intimate, focusing on portraits of his wife, his
children, and Gabrielle, his maid, whooften also posed for his nude
paintings. His still lifes were composed of flowers and fruits from
his own garden, and the landscapes were those that surrounded him.
The nudes, especially, reflect the serenity that he found in his
work. Examples of this period include The Artist's Family (1896) and
Sleeping Bather (1897). He attempted to embody his admiration for
the female form in sculpture, with the assistance of young Richard
Guino. Since Renoir was no longer able to do sculpture himself,
Guino became, about 1913, the skillful instrument who willingly
followed his directions. He yielded before the personality of Renoir
and succeeded so well that the works have all the qualities of
Renoir's style.
Renoir's wife died in 1915 after having returned from Gérardmer,
where she had gone to see their son Jean, who had been seriously
wounded in the war, and who would go on to become an important
filmmaker. Renoir survived his wifeby four years. Several months
before his death, he was able to go to Paris to see his Portrait of
Mme Georges Charpentier (1876–77), which had been recently acquired
by the state. Onthat occasion, several friends wheeled him for the
last time through the Louvre to view the masterpieces that he had
venerated throughout his life.
Raymond Cogniat
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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
"LA LOGE"
1874
oil on canvas
Courtauld Institute
Galleries, London.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
La
Loge
Oil on canvas
1874
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
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This painting, completed by Renoir when he was 33, was shown at the
first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The romantic, fashionable
subject of the work was in favour at the time and so was one of only
four paintings shown that escaped criticism. In the foreground is a
young woman in a black-and-white striped dress, wearing evening
gloves, with pink roses in her hair and at her breast. In one hand,
resting on the red velvet ledge of the theatre box, she holds her
opera glasses, while in the other she holds a folded black fan. Her
male companion, seated behind her in order to give her prominence,
scans the audience through his raised opera glasses. A model, Nini
Lopez, and the artist's brother, Edmond, posed as the society
couple.
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
At the Theatre
1876
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
The Luncheon of the Boating Party
1881
Venue for gentry, bourgeoisie and boheme
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Luncheon of the Boating Party
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It took Pierre-August Renoir, from his studio in the centre of
Pans, a mere 20 minutes by train to reach the open countryside.
Every half hour, a train left on the new line to St. Germain -
apopular technical achievement in an era which could boast of so
little in the way of public transport. As a consequence, rural
Chatou on Sundays was packed with Parisians who, like the artists,
longed for fresh air and light. They promenaded along the banks of
the Seine, "roamed aimlessly under high poplars", went boating or
swam in the Seine, unperturbed by the many floating carcasses of
dead animals.
Thus the account that Renoir gave retrospectively to his son, the
film director Jean Renoir, and to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard,
both of whom recorded the artist's memoirs in writing. The
circumstances under which Renoir painted The Luncheon of the Boating
Party are therefore extraordinarily well documented.
According to Renoir, two establishments were especially popular
among Sunday trippers. One, situated on an island on the Seine, was
called the "Grenouillere", literally the "frog pond". The name was a
pun, referring less to croaking amphibians than to the Parisian
girls who went there in search of a lover.
The clientele at the "Restaurant Four-naise", on the other hand,
consisted largely of "young sporting types in striped singlets",
Renoir recalled. "It was a sort of water sports club", a hotel
proprietor having "hit on the idea of doing up a wooden shack he
owned on the island and serving lemonade there to Sunday-trippers
... He was a rowing enthusiast himself and knew all about hiring
boats out to Parisians." Monsieur Fournaise appears in the picture
in the appropriate outfit, a white cotton singlet stretched over his
bulging chest; he is apparently observing the activities of his
guests.
Renoir had frequented this establishment since the 1860s, forming an
acquaintance with the proprietors and introducing several of his
artist friends. He loved to patronise this "amusing restaurant"
where "you could always find a volunteer to play the piano of an
evening" - whereupon the tables would be cleared aside on the
terrace outside to make room for dancing.
Here, over the years, Renoir painted a large number of landscapes,
as well as portraits of the landlord and his family. In 1880 he
decided to embark on a large-scale work, "a picture of boaters,
which I've been itching to do for a long time ... One must from time
to time try things beyond one's strength." The painting measures
129.5 x 172.7cm and is therefore equal in size to another ambitious
work begun five years earlier: Le Moulin de la Galette. Before
completing it at his Paris studio, Renoir had worked on the painting
from April to September 1880 on the terrace of the riverside
restaurant. It would appear that he enjoyed himself: "The weather is
good and I have models", he wrote in a letter. He later looked back
on the experience with nostalgia: "We still had life ahead of us; we
denied ourselves nothing ... Life was a never-ending celebration!"
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Paintings to pay the bill
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Luncheon of the Boating Party (detail)
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The boaters and their lady-friends, having finished eating, sit
back among the "debris" of the meal, relaxed and sated. In a novel
written in 1868, the brothers Edmond and Jules de Gon-court,
contemporaries of Renoir, described the mood after a full meal in
the country: "The day was there solely to be enjoyed: the fatigue
... the fresh, invigorating air, quivering reflections on the
surface of the water, piercing sunlight... that almost animal
intoxication with pleasure."
On the white tablecloth, besides crumpled linen napkins, we see a
bowl of fruit, a small barrel of brandy, half-full bottles
of wine and various glasses: round ones for red wine, tall ones for
coffee, smaller ones for "chasers", cognac or liqueurs. In his A Day
in the Country, published in 1881, Guy de Maupassant includes the
menu of a simple riverside restaurant: baked fish, rabbit stew,
salad and a sweet. The characters also order a local wine and a
bottle of Bordeaux to go with their meal. This was a fairly large
repast, costing about one and a half francs per person, a luxury
Renoir and his artist friends were unable to afford for many years.
"I don't always have enough to eat", he told the artist Frederic
Bazille in 1869. "I'll write you more some other time, because I'm
hungry and I have a plate of turbot with white sauce in front of me.
I'm not putting a stamp on this letter. I have only 12 sous in my
pocket, and that's for going to Paris, when I need it." In the 1860s
and 1870s the works of avant-garde painters who were ridiculed as
mere "impressionists" were worth practically nothing. Artists who,
unlike Edouard Manet or Paul Cezanne, did not come from wealthy
families, had a particularly hard life. Claude Monet had the hardest
time of all; with a wife and child to support, he very often had
little more than the bread Renoir sometimes brought him after
visiting his parents.
The latter, artisans who had retired to the country, may not have
been rich, but at least they had bread on their plates and a coop
full of rabbits. Renoir, too, would probably have been better off
had he stuck to the trade he had originally learned: porcelain
painting, a skill which had enabled him to earn a living at the age
of fifteen. But at 21 the artist, born in 1841, turned his hand to
painting in earnest. He learned "anatomy, perspective, drawing and
portraiture" at the studio of a well-known teacher, where he also
met other young painters.
These artists would meet at a Parisian cafe to talk about new forms
of perception and revolutionary painting techniques. Meeting at a
cafe was necessary because most of them stayed in such miserable
lodgings. (It is thanks to deplorable housing conditions that cafes,
restaurants and bars have come to play such a vibrant role in French
culture.) For many years Renoir's furniture consisted of no more
than "a mattress lying on the floor, a table, chair and chest of
drawers ... and a stove for the model".
The artist used the stove to make his daily bowl of bean or lentil
soup. According to his son, Renoir enjoyed "fresh basic foods",
detesting margarine or sauces made with flour. However, he was able
to indulge his innate epicurean leanings only by accepting the
occasional invitation of some rich patron, or by dining at the "Restauarant
Fournaise". Here he was seldom presented with a bill at the end of
the meal: "You gave us that landscape", the proprietor would say.
"My father insisted his painting was without value: 'I'm warning
you, nobody will want it.' 'What does that matter to me if it's
beautiful. Anyway, one must hang something on the wall to hide those
patches of damp.'"
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Sporting and other friends
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Luncheon of the Boating Party (detail)
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For much of his career Renoir could not afford to pay the fees of
professional models, a single sitting costing as much as ten francs
- the price of several meals. However, even when he was much better
off, he preferred to paint his family and friends. He was interested
in people and their relationships. He was a social being: "I need to
feel a bustle going on around me."
According to Renoir, all the social classes met under Fournaise's
striped awning. They had two things in common: friendship to the
artist and an interest in art or sport. The man in the shiny black
top hat, for example, was an art collector called Charles Ephrussi,
a banker and owner of the art magazine Gazette des Beaux-Arts, in
which, in 1880, he devoted a study to the Impressionists.
By contrast, the bowler-hatted man at the centre of the painting was
interested only in "horses, women and boats". The former officer and
diplomat, Baron Bar-bier, is reported to have told Renoir: "I don't
know anything about art, and even less about your art, but I like
helping you."
When he heard of the artist's plans for a boating picture, he
offered to take over the organization and provide boats. Aristocrats
like himself kept fit by riding, boxing and tennis, whereas ordinary
people made do with walking, or riding the newly-invented bicycle.
(It was in falling from a bicycle that Renoir broke his arm in
1880). But the gentry, bourgoisie and boheme would generally meet in
order to indulge their passion for rowing. Fournaise "knew all about
hiring boats out to Parisians, entrusting them only to trained
enthusiasts ... Everyone pulled on their oars as hard as they could,
trying to break records and become expert rowers."
One such expert was Gustave Caille-botte, a wealthy bachelor, here
shown sitting astride a chair next to the actress Ellen Andree. A
trained engineer, he built racing boats, using them to participate
in competitions. At the same time, he was an enthusiastic painter,
though aware of the limitations of his talent. He was a generous
man, paying a good price for his friends' works.
Wearing the appropriately named cano-tiers - "boaters" - on their
heads, and with necks and muscular arms bared, Fournaise and
Caillebotte stand out among the other guests in their correct city
clothes. In an era which devoted so much attention to the "decency"
of clothing, a girl might easily feel embarrassed by a sportsman's
bare arms, as Maupassant recounts in his Day in the Country: "She
pretended not to notice them", whereas her mother, "bolder, and
drawn by a feminine curiosity which may even have been desire, could
not remove her eyes ..."
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Ideal woman in a hat
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Luncheon of the Boating Party (detail)
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The guests gathered on the terrace had yet another thing in
common: their youth. Even the solemn-looking banker Ephrussi was
only 31. Caillebotte was 32, while the girls in their fashionable
hats, whose healthful, rosy bloom Renoir so loved to paint, were
little more than twenty years old. "Come tomorrow with a pretty
summer hat", the artist wrote to one of them on 17th September 1880,
"in a light dress. Wear something underneath, it's starting to get
cold ..."
None of the sportsmen's lady-friends would have been seen dead
without a hat. The hat was an indispensable sign of respectability
and social status. The actresses Ellen Andree and Jeanne Samary, the
latter of whom is shown holding her hands over her ears in the
background, refusing to listen to the compliments of two admirers,
wear highly fashionable headgear acquired from a milliner's. The
landlord's daughter Alphonsine, leaning on the railing at the edge
of the terrace, like the seamstress Aline Charigot and the
flower-girl Angele, have trimmed their simple straw hats with
flowers or ribbons.
Angele, seen in Renoir's painting with a wine glass raised to her
lips, was one of the many prostitutes who roamed Montmartre. This,
at least, was the account Renoir gave his son. While he was working
on the boating picture at Fournaise's, Angele had managed to "pick
up" a young man from a well-to-do family who married her and took
her to live in the country, where he turned her into a lady with
affected manners. Aline Charigot, here seen entirely engrossed in
her little dog, had recently moved to Paris from her home in
Burgundy. She, too, had found a serious admirer: Auguste Renoir.
Since his decision to devote his life to painting, Renoir had
subordinated everything to this aim, even suffering hunger or cold
if need be. According to his son, he went "through life with the
delicious feeling of possessing nothing" but "the hands in his
pockets", avoiding serious relationships of any kind.
For "I have known painters", Renoir recalled, "who produced nothing
of value because they spent their time seducing women instead of
painting them." The actress Jeanne Samary, who wanted to marry him,
was eventually forced to resign: "He was not made for marriage; with
his brush he weds every woman he paints." However, what had been so
easily acceptable to a young bohemian proved increasingly onerous to
the forty-year-old artist: "When you are alone, the evenings are
deadly dull." In 1879 he met Aline.
The young seamstress was mad about water and "adored rowing". Renoir
took her with him to Chatou. During the evenings, Baron Barbier
waltzed her round the terrace, while Caillebotte looked after her
"as he might have done ayounger sister" and Ellen Andree was
determined to "give this delightful peasant girl a bit of polish".
But Aline refused to give up her Burgundian accent and "become an
artificial Parisian".
She sat for Renoir, and he taught her to swim. At that time,
according to Maupassant, only women who were sufficiently
well-rounded dared bathe in the river. "The others, padded out with
cottonwool, shored up with stays, propped up a little here, touched
up a little there, looked on in blank disdain while their sisters
splashed about in the water."
Aline could show herself without fear. The 21-year-old Burgundian
was "slim and yet everything in her was rounded"; she was one of
those "privileged beings whom the gods have spared the horrors of
acute angles." But she not only incorporated Renoir's ideal of
feminine beauty, the artist felt that, with her, he was altogether
in the best of hands. Aline appeared to him to be "extraordinarily
gifted to succeed in an area of which men scarcely dare dream:
making life bearable".
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Air,
light and water
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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Luncheon of the Boating Party (detail)
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Ironically, while he was painting the apparently so light-hearted
and harmonious Luncheon of the Boating Party, Renoir's life had
entered a crisis. No longer as young as he had been, the artist
suffered from lack of recognition, honour and money. He had also
come to a crossroads in his art: "I no longer knew what I was
about."
For many years Renoir had belonged to the group of artists known as
"Impressionists". Together with Frederic Bazille, Ca-mille Pissaro,
Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet, he had left his studio in the 1860s
to paint out of doors, sailing down the Seine painting and drawing
with Sisley in 1865, or competing to produce the best work with
Claude Monet at the "Gre-nouillere", near Chatou, four years later.
The young artists tried "to capture the light and project it
directly onto the canvas", as Monet put it. They developed new
methods of reproducing the effect of light in the trees and its
reflection on the surface of the water. They dissolved solid forms
and revolutionized painting. At the same time, however, they met
with the stern disapproval of the critics and the public, and their
exhibitions of 1874 and 1876 ended in failure, leaving them lucky if
they managed to sell a painting for 50 francs. By 1878, Renoir had
had enough and began to do traditional portraits of rich Paris
society ladies. "I think he's sunk", wrote Pissaro in 1879. "Poverty
is so hard to bear", he added sympathetically. "The problem isn't
art, but a hungry stomach ... and an empty purse."
However, Pissaro was doing his friend an injustice. Renoir's break
with Impressionism - the group was in the process of dissolving
anyway - had artistic reasons: "I had travelled as far as
Impressionism could take me", he later recalled, "arriving at a
point where I could no longer paint or draw ... I began to notice
that the paintings that came out were too complicated and that one
was constantly forced to cheat."
In the Luncheon of the Boating Party Renoir "cheats" in virtuoso
fashion once again. His reflections of light and reverberating
shadows, the atmosphere of a hot summer's day spent on a riverside
terrace, remain a masterpiece of Impressionist "plein-air". The
Seine landscape in the background is composed of air, light and
water. The figures, however, acquire a new sense of solidity.
Rigorously composed, and far from dissolving into their hazy
surroundings, they attain an almost monumental stature at the centre
of the canvas. They are harbingers of the new "rigorous style" that
Renoir was soon to evolve under the influence of the Old Masters.
After completing the Boating Party, the artist - with the money from
his portraits -allowed himself a trip to the South. The break had a
considerable effect on his life and art. On returning to Paris in
the autumn of 1881, his decision was made: he set up house with
Aline, who made his "life bearable", and returned to work with
renewed confidence.
Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen
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ARCHITECTURE
Architecture in itself was not a subject that greatly excited the
Impressionists; for them, it was static material. The contents of a
city, on the other hand, were a different matter. While individual
buildings constituted permanent masses, an avenue or the corner of a
square contained life and movement in the form of the figures as
they bustled past. Architecture was of interest only when buildings
seemed to "move" in the shimmering light. Gothic buildings, such as
Rouen Cathedral, made particularly good subjects, as demonstrated in
Monet's landmark series. Bridges over water and constructions built
of glass were also favoured for their interaction with changing
light
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Pont des Arts, Paris
1867
Norton Simon Foundation, Los
Angeles
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Le Pont Neuf
1872
National Gallery, London
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DANCE
The Impressionists flourished during the first 20 years of the Belle Epoque, when Paris was the undisputed capital of pleasure and
entertainment. There was dancing everywhere and at all times,
throughout the day and night, in cafes, hotels, public dance halls,
and open squares. Grand balls were given by the wealthy, dances were
organized for the workers and countryfolk, and there was dancing in
the cabarets, circuses, opera, and, of course, the ballet. For the
Impressionists, dancing was a natural theme; thev captured with ease
the slow and fast paces, the grace and the strength of the moves,
the sudden stop, the flight, the turn, the way the skirts swept
around as the dancers spun.
Degas
and
Renoir were among the most
enthusiastic painters of this aspect of Parisian life.
Renoir
frequented Sunday afternoon-dances at the Moulin de la Galette,
while
Degas
indulged his fascination for life backstage at the
Opera.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Dance in the Town
1883
Musee d'Orsay,
Paris.
Suzanne Valadon, in a dress with a long train, and Eugene Lestringuez
dance against the background of palm trees.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Dance in the Country
1882-83
Musee d'Orsay,
Paris.
The couple, Paul Lhote and Aline Charigot, with their relaxed
pose,
blend elegantly into their surroundings.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Dance at Bougival
1883
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Dancer
1874
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see collection:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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