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 ornamentation and beauty. He does not usually touch on the harshest aspects of modern life, as Manet or Van Gogh sometimes did. He always kept one foot in the tradition; he put himself in relation with the painters of the eighteenth century who showed the gallant society of the Rococo, like Watteau.

In his creations he shows the joy of life, even when the protagonists are workers. They are always characters having fun, in a pleasant nature. He can be related to Henri Matisse, despite their different styles.

He treated themes of flowers, sweet scenes of children and women and especially the female nude, reminiscent of Rubens for the thick forms. In terms of style and technique, he was strongly influenced by Corot.

Renoir has 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 Great Bathers are his most representative works.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Biography

Childhood

Born into a humble family, he was the sixth of seven children of the tailor Léonard Renoir and the seamstress Marguerite Merlet. In 1844, the Renoirs moved to Paris, where his father hoped to improve his economic situation. In 1848, he began attending a religious school run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

Given his great ability for solfège, his teachers included him in the young boys' choir of the Saint-Eustache church, directed by the composer Charles Gounod. In 1854, he dropped out of school and was sent to the studio of the Lévy brothers to learn the art of porcelain painting.

According to Edmond Renoir, his younger brother, his desire to forge an artistic career was already apparent in his childhood, when Auguste drew on the walls with pieces of charcoal. The apprentice got a taste for the craft: at the end of the day, carrying a cardboard bigger than himself, he attended free drawing courses. All this lasted two or three years.

He showed rapid progress and, after a few months of apprenticeship, he was entrusted with jobs regularly assigned to experienced workers, which earned him more than one mockery. Émile Laporte, one of the Lévy's workmen, 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 Renoirs' modest home on Rue Argenteuil, Laporte advised his parents to allow him to study art painting, for he foresaw a promising future for him as a painter.

Auguste Renoir never saw his humble origins as an impediment, and claimed that had he been born into an intellectual environment, it would have taken years to shed his ideas and see things as they were.

In the large courtyard of the Louvre, from where the Renoirs lived not far away, little Auguste Renoir played cops and robbers with other boys. It was completely natural for him to enter the former royal palace turned famous museum after the Revolution, where he often entered the galleries of ancient sculpture to stay there for hours.

However, little Renoir's expeditions were not limited to the surroundings of the Louvre. His organic and almost physical sensation - dating back to his childhood - of being part of the city would leave an imprint on his artistic work.

Renoir saw beauty in the narrow streets of medieval Paris, in the variegated Gothic architecture, in the market vendors who never wore corsets, and so he suffered at 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 some time in the Gilbert house on Bac Street, where he painted translucent paper shutters that served as stained-glass windows in the rudimentary missionary chapels. During those years, he bought for professional use the necessary material for oil painting and made his first portraits.

Among the archives of the Louvre, the authorization, dated 1861, which was granted to him to copy paintings in the rooms of the museum, is preserved. In 1862, Renoir passed the entrance exam to the School of Fine Arts. At the same time, he frequented a free workshop taught by Charles Gleyre, a professor at that institution.

During this stage, he met in Gleyre's workshop those who would be his best friends and companions in art throughout his life. There, a solid friendship was forged between him, Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley, who often went to paint together outdoors in the forest of Fontainebleau.

Bazille would be the first to call his companions to meet in a group. However, this did not happen until after his death in combat during the Franco-Prussian war, so the young Bazille never had the opportunity to exhibit with the rest of the group and receive the title of "impressionist."

Renoir claimed that it was he who had brought Sisley to his master's studio, although it is possible that he was not right and that Sisley had arrived there on his own. Renoir obtained outstanding results in the obligatory drawing, perspective, anatomy and likeness competitions, which irrefutably demonstrated the fruitfulness of his years of work in Gleyre's studio.

The period of study with Gleyre did not last 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 must have left even earlier, since he had no money to pay for his studies. Then began a period of poverty, but also of new encounters, discoveries in painting and new friendships.

Delacroix and Manet: first artistic influences

Unlike some of his friends, who advocated studying from nature, Renoir found a great source of 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 of the great Romantic's painting for them. Renoir recognized in Delacroix's work something particularly close to him.

In 1863, an important event shook the artistic life of the French capital. By order of Napoleon III, the Salon des Refusés was opened on the fringes of the official Paris Salon, where Édouard Manet's Lunch on the Grass made a great impact.

From then on, his name became associated with the concept of modern art. In the mid-1860s, Manet frequented the Café Guerbois on Rue Grande-des-Batignolles (now Avenue de Clichy). Manet's presence attracted artists, writers and critics sympathetic to the ideas of modern art to the Guerbois, as did Renoir and his friends, who had left the Left Bank.

Daily 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 studio where they could all work together.

Of course, in the Parisian region at that time there were also places to paint in the open air. Renoir did not travel too far as he lacked the means to do so, but there was no shortage of sources of inspiration in the vicinity of the French capital. So much so that it was there, around the village of Barbizon, that the pictorial school of the same name emerged, of which Renoir and other Impressionists felt they were the direct heirs.

The motifs of the forest of Fontainebleau were inexhaustible and there were the favorite work sites of Renoir and his friends. Monet and Renoir painted the Seine river, near the Chatou bridge, where, in the middle of a multitude of islets, at La Grenouillère, Alphonse Fournaise opened the restaurant that became a favorite place of the future Impressionists.

Fournaise often refused Renoir's payment. In 1863, the Goncourt brothers mentioned in their Journal the Auberge de Marlotte with its tastelessly painted vulgar room, a place that Renoir later depicted around 1866 in Le cabaret de la mère Anthony.

They date from the same period The Sisley Marriage (1868) and Portrait of William Sisley (1864), the artist's father. Renoir and Bazille painted each other in the studio they shared. Renoir often depicted Jules le Cœur, whom he sometimes visited in Marlotte. Some specialists of the Impressionist's work even consider that the standing figure in The Cabaret of Mère Anthony is not Sisley, as is commonly believed, but Le Cœur.

Lise Tréhot: his first muse

Le Cœur secured for Renoir a series of portrait commissions that would eventually become his main source of income. However, perhaps Le Cœur's most important impact on Renoir's work was that it was through him that the artist met his first muse, Lise Tréhot, sister of Le Cœur's friend.

Lise posed for the painter between 1865 and 1872, became his friend and the first model of that particular world that the artist was beginning to create. Lise became the canon of feminine beauty for Renoir at the time. Renoir must have possessed a real gift for mise-en-scène since all his later paintings evoke a theatrical spectacle.

During his youth, when Lise was his only actress, he tried to capture on his own canvases the artistic experiences of all his masters, from the classical period to modern art.

The apotheosis of this period were the 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 precursors.

In 1870, he painted Odalisque (Woman of Algiers). For this, he dressed Lise in fine silks and an oriental brocade sparkling with gold, covered her hair with orange plumage and surrounded her with luxurious tapestries.

Two years later, in 1872, the artist returned to the theme, but the name he gave to his work designated his subject with the utmost sincerity: Interior of a Harem in Montmartre (Parisiennes dressed as Algerians). Lise posed again for the painting, but for the last time. The same year, she married the architect Georges Brière de l'Isle, a friend of Le Cœur.

Before he met Lise, in 1864, he had exhibited one of his paintings at the Salon in the Grand Palais. It showed Esmeralda, a character in Victor Hugo's famous novel Our Lady of Paris, dancing with her goat around a bonfire that illuminated a whole village of rogues. Renoir destroyed the work immediately after the exhibition.

The following year, Portrait of William Sisley and a landscape were exhibited in the salon. As a rule, works by future Impressionists were not admitted to the Salon, despite 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. On the other hand, Lise with a Parasol was exhibited there in 1868. The Bather with the Griffon and Odalisque (Woman of Algiers) also won a place at the Salon in subsequent years.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Maturity

Franco-Prussian War and the Cooperative Society

On July 18, 1870, the tranquility of everyday life met 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. His daughter was passionate about painting and the artist gave her lessons and, in turn, painted her portrait. However, this idyll ended sadly as Renoir became seriously ill and spent some time in the hospital in Bordeaux.

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 then with Edmond Maître, a musician and lover of painting.

There he learned of Bazille's death, which affected him more than the war itself. The Renoir Rider stage found an extension in his work. In 1873, he painted Ride on horseback in the forest of Boulogne.

The official Salon rejected his painting, which would eventually be exhibited in the Salon des Refusés, organized behind the Grand Palais.

This episode put an end to Auguste Renoir's illusions about a possible compromise with the official Salon, mainly because it was during this period that the conviction of the need to officialize his painting with an exhibition of his own matured in him and among his comrades.

The union of the artists, which Bazille and Pissarro had already fantasized about at the end of the 1860s, finally came to fruition.

The persistent rejection suffered by Renoir and his comrades from the official Salon jury made it difficult for them to sell their works. They had to exhibit their 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 "Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc.". They agreed that each member of the society would contribute a tenth of the proceeds from the sale of their 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 French artists based in London, to exhibit with them. Manet was also invited, but he declined.

According to a certain version, Manet would have expressed that he would never exhibit with Paul Cézanne, but Renoir approached the matter in a different way: according to him, Manet found no reason to exhibit his work with them, the young artists, since his work was accepted in the official Salon.

In the end, neither Manet, nor his friend Fantin-Latour, nor Tissot, nor Legros participated in the exhibition. Nevertheless, the group of friends managed to gather twenty-nine artists, who presented 165 works.

Although most European and American critics derided the exhibition as "comical" and accused its participants of waging a war on beauty, its impact was particularly reverberating. Although it was not commercially successful, the image of each impressionist was slowly beginning to take shape.

Renoir exhibited six paintings and one pastel. The Ballerina, The Parisienne (or The Lady in Blue), large canvases for which Henriette Henriot, an actress at the Odeon, had posed, and The Box - also called The Proscenium - captured the public's attention.

In the latter 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 short, the fugitive grace of the Parisienne.

Montmartre and new friendships

The first exhibition of the Impressionists coincided with the moment of affirmation of Renoir's vision as a painter. This stage of his life was marked by a significant event: in 1873, he moved to Montmartre, where he would live until 1884 at 35 rue Saint-Georges.

The artist would remain faithful to this neighborhood until the end of his days, for it was there that he would find his outdoor motifs, 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 works in 1872 and, although he was sometimes on the verge of bankruptcy, he never abandoned the Impressionists to their fate. When he lacked the means to buy their paintings, he helped Renoir by giving him a certain amount of money per month.

In 1875, at an unsuccessful sale held at the Hôtel Drouot involving Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Berthe Morisot, a Customs official named Victor Chocquet bought some of Renoir's paintings.

Thus began another long friendship. Chocquet immediately commissioned the portrait of his wife. The civil servant was one of the first to perceive that Renoir and his comrades were the direct heirs of the art of the 18th century. For his part, Renoir considered Chocquet the greatest art collector in the country.

The years spent in Montmartre, around the 1870s, were probably the happiest in Renoir's artistic life. The neglected little garden in the vicinity of his studio on rue Cortot, leased in 1875, provided him with more than one outdoor motif that promoted the realization of his best paintings of this period.

The same garden, where he regularly met a friend of his, became the subject of representation in his painting The Garden of Rue Cortot in Montmartre. There he painted The Awning, The Swing and Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette, one of his most famous canvases. Renoir found his source of inspiration right next to his house, on the same Cortot street, in the restaurant of the Moulin de la Galette.

In Montmartre the artist met Anne, who would become his model in numerous canvases; Angèle, who helped him rent the garden where the swing painted in the painting of the same name was located; and, finally, Margot, who appeared for the first time in Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, where she is seen dancing with a tall Spaniard, Pedro Vidal de Solares y Cardenas, another friend of Renoir.

Later, Margot would pose for a whole series of canvases, among which we can highlight The Chocolate Cup, accepted at the Salon in 1878, with the title Café. Suffering from an incurable illness, Margot died in 1879 and her death had a profound impact on the painter.

In 1876, on the occasion of the second Impressionist exhibition, Renoir exhibited mainly portraits, because it was precisely with portraits that the artist was trying to make a living. His friends introduced him to potential clients.

Along with some old fans of his work, they began to buy his paintings from financiers such as Henri Cernuschi and Charles Ephrussi. Eugène Murer, owner of a restaurant on Boulevard Voltaire, commissioned Renoir and Pisarro to paint his salon.

Every Wednesday, a large group of artists dined for free in his restaurant. He also consigned portraits to Renoir, including his own and that of his sister. In September 1876, he was invited by the writer Alphonse Daudet to spend a month at his residence in Champrosay, where Renoir portrayed the writer Julia Daudet.

In 1879, the painter met the diplomat Paul Bérard, who also became his friend and patron.

In 1877, at the third Impressionist exhibition, Renoir exhibited more than twenty works, including landscapes painted in Paris, on the banks of the Seine, outside the city and in Monet's garden, studies of faces, women and bouquets of flowers, portraits of Sisley, the actress Jeanne Samary, the writer Alphonse Daudet and the politician Eugène Spuller, The Swing and Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette.

The labels on some of these paintings read: "Property of Georges Charpentier". Renoir's connection with the Charpentier family played a decisive role in his destiny. The artist worked assiduously to satisfy the Charpentier's requests.

Aline Charigot: his future wife

For the seventh Impressionist exhibition 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 at the Salons, as he now had a family to support.

The story of his marriage had begun around 1880. Around this 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. Sometimes, the face is seen in the crowd of the Place Clichy, leaving a sense of fleeting happiness.

At other times, her presence is glimpsed in the image of the red-haired girl reading, or in the supple silhouette of a young woman climbing into a boat. In The Rowers' Luncheon of 1881, the young woman is depicted in profile at the lower left of the canvas, wearing a hat adorned with fashionable flowers and holding a Pekingese between both hands.

Her name was Aline Charigot; in 1880 she was 21 years old. Renoir met her at Madame Camille's creamery, across the street from her house on rue Saint-Georges. Aline lived with her mother next door and earned her living as a seamstress. The mutual attraction between them was evident.

Jean Renoir claimed that his father had begun painting his mother long before he met her. Indeed, in numerous paintings, such as The First Exit (1876-1877), his model was similar to Aline. In his forties, the artist seemed to have found a new youth.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Travels and international recognition

In 1881 and 1882, Renoir changed his place of work many times, which would be reflected in his paintings as landscapes. He continued to paint on the banks of the Seine, in Chatou and Bougival, places so dear to him that he refused 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 back The Banana Field and The Arabian Feast. Then, he traveled to Italy, also for the first time, where he visited Milan, Venice and Florence. Back in the south of France, Renoir worked with Cézanne, but contracted influenza and pneumonia in 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 demanded means, but happily his work paid off: he received many portrait commissions.

Among his clients was his old friend Paul Durand-Ruel. The art dealer consigned portraits of his five children, three panels on the theme of dance and murals in his residence. In 1883, on the boulevard de la Madeleine, Durand-Ruel mounted the first exhibition exclusively devoted to Renoir, showing seventy works.

Despite not having been very successful in selling the Impressionists' paintings, the art dealer decided to open a gallery in New York. During the 1880s, Renoir finally met with 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 often painted on the beaches of Normandy. He toured the islands of Guernsey and Jersey with Aline and Paul Lhote. In March 1885, Pierre, his first son, was born.

He paid the doctor who attended the birth by painting flowers on the walls of his apartment. In autumn, the Renoirs left for Essoyes, in Champagne-Ardenne, Aline's native village, where Renoir made several sketches of the mother of his child breastfeeding. A year later, he painted from them Maternity (Aline and Pierre).

The Ingresque period

In Renoir's artistic life, the 1880s proved to be an eventful decade. In his conversations with Ambroise Vollard, he mentioned the feeling of a dead end that had arisen around 1883. His dissatisfaction with the old Impressionist manner led the painter to adopt a new style. He felt he knew neither how to paint nor how to draw.

Depressed, he destroyed a whole series of canvases. At 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 "Ingresque period". This is a trend perceptible in all his paintings of this period: a cleaner drawing and a more precise tracing, with a clear plasticity, as well as the use of local colors.

In a way, this tendency is already visible in El almuerzo de los remeros and even more in Maternidad and Los paraguas. The latter, painted at two different times - begun in 1881 and completed in 1885 - testifies to the evolution of the artist's style: soft and impressionistic on the right, hard and laconic on the left.

In Normandy, in 1884, Renoir painted the portrait of Paul Bérard's three daughters: The Children's Afternoon at Wargemont. Leaving aside the purity of line and form typical of Ingres, this canvas possesses the character typical of the Renoir of this period. Its range of blues and pinks is reminiscent of Rococo painting and the eighteenth century.

He was inspired by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Antoine Watteau, whose painting he had admired since his childhood. His great composition In the Garden, of 1885, marked his farewell to the permanent party at 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.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir;s Marriage

On April 14, 1890, the artist married Aline at 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 them with the housework.

She arrived at the Renoir household when Pierre was already old, so her main concern was Jean. The inhabitants of Montmartre became accustomed 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 illnesses, which kept him bedridden for a long time. In 1888, in Essoyes, his face was partially paralyzed due to neuralgia. In the same place, one rainy day in the summer of 1889, Renoir fell off his bicycle and fractured his right arm.

Fortunately, as a consequence of a previous fracture, the artist had already learned to paint with his left hand. On this occasion, however, 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 had to suffer permanent pain. Yet, despite the fragility of his condition, his fantastic thirst for life and creative passion remained unquenched.

During those same two decades, Renoir also experienced some great joys. In 1901, Claude, his third son, was born, who would take Jean's place, now grown up, 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 scene of exhibitions that crowned the triumph of his painting. In 1904, at the Second Exhibition of the Salon d'Automne, a whole room was dedicated to him.

In those years, the family traveled from the boulevard de Rochechouart in Paris to the Mediterranean coast and small villages in the south of France in search of climatic conditions that would benefit the artist's health.

Relocation to the Midi

In 1903, he moved with his family to Cagnes-sur-Mer, as the climate of the region 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 east of Cagnes, to save the venerable olive trees whose shade he admired and which a potential buyer threatened to destroy.

Aline Charigot had her husband's last house built there, where he would spend his last days under the southern sun, well protected by his inseparable hat. He lives there with his wife Aline and his children, as well as with his servants, often also with many friends, who help him in his daily life, prepare his canvases and his brushes.

The works of this period are essentially portraits, nudes, still lifes and mythological scenes. His paintings are bright, his pictorial material more fluid, gaining in transparency.

Round, sensual female bodies glow with life. But deforming rheumatism gradually forced him, around 1905, to stop walking. At his estate he painted in a studio he erected in his garden in 1916, a few years before his death.

Renoir was now an important personality in the Western art world, exhibiting throughout Europe and the United States, and participating in the Salons d'Automne in Paris. The material freedom 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 tried new techniques, and in particular devoted himself to sculpture, encouraged by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, although his hands were deformed by rheumatoid arthritis.

The painter Lucien Mignon was a close friend of Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer and was influenced by his style. He also had as close friends Ferdinand Deconchy.

Last years of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Gabrielle continued to pose for the painter, as did other models who had become almost part of the family. One of his last models would be a young red-haired girl named Andrée, whom Jean would later marry after the death of her father. In the last years of his life, Renoir embraced the idea of a large composition made of nudes.

In 1887, he had finished his painting The Great Bathers, whose style, a little harsh in the manner of Ingres, is characteristic of his work at that time.

Female nudes appear in Great Nude (Nude on the Cushions) (1907), Bathing Woman Drying Her Leg (ca. 1910), After the Bath (1912), The Judgment of Paris (1913-1914), The Bathers (1918-1919), etc. Over the years, he developed a taste for decorative painting, inspired by the great Italians.

In 1915, Aline's death plunged Renoir into solitude. His sons Pierre and Jean were wounded during the First World War. Renoir continued, in spite of everything, to paint until his death in 1919.

He would have asked, on his deathbed, for a canvas and brushes to paint the bouquet of flowers on the windowsill. Upon 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.

At first, he was buried with 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 department of Aube where they rested. now in the cemetery of Essoyes, as Renoir and his wife had wished. Since then, Pierre and Jean, and later the ashes of Dido Renoir, Jean's second wife, share their burial place.

Sculptures in collaboration

From 1913 to 1918, in collaboration with Richard Guino, a young sculptor of Catalan origin 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, after a long process initiated in 1965 by Michel Guino, Richard's son and himself a sculptor, who worked to make his father's work known.

After a thorough analysis of the pieces, the processes that governed their creation and the hearing 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 specifies 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 conveyed in certain texts or newspaper articles referring to the "affair". The aim was to contribute to unveiling 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 pass from Renoir's painting to Guino's sculpture, the spirit of painting is reflected in the spirit of sculpture. A proven transmutation between two artists.

The phenomenon could be achieved thanks to their friendship and their intense community of points of view. The painter in front of his canvases and the sculptor working the clay of Collettes. It is this unique and rare point of view 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 made terracottas, two dancers and a flute player.

Quotes

For me, a painting should be something kind, joyful and beautiful, yes, beautiful. There are already 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 it should have been [...] I, who am the most old-fashioned of all painters, have been represented as a revolutionary.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Outstanding works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

• The Cabaret of Mère Anthony (1866), Stockholm National Museum (Stockholm, Sweden)
• The Painter Jules Le Cœur in the Forest of Fontainebleau (1866), São Paulo Museum of Art (São Paulo, Brazil)
• Diana the Huntress (1867), National Gallery of Art (Washington D. C., United States)
• Lise (Woman with a Parasol) (1867), Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany)
• The Sisley Marriage (1868), Museum Wallraf-Richartz (Cologne, Germany)
• In Summer (1868)
• The Clown (1868), Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo, The Netherlands)
• La Grenouillère (1869), Stockholm National Museum (Stockholm, Sweden)
• The Bather with the Griffon (1870), São Paulo Museum of Art (São Paulo, Brazil)
• Madame Clémentine Valensi Stora (The Algerian Woman) (1870), San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts (San Francisco, United States)
• Odalisque (Woman of Algiers) (1870), National Gallery of Art (Washington D. C., United States)
• The Promenade (1870), J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, United States)
• Harem Interior in Montmartre (Parisiennes Dressed as Algerians) (1872), National Museum of Western Art (Tokyo, Japan)
• Half-naked woman lying down: the rose (ca. 1872), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• Ride on Horseback in the Forest of Boulogne (1873), Hamburg Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany)
• The Box (1874), Courtlaud Institute Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• The Parisienne (1874), National Museum of Wales (Cardiff, UK)
• The Reading of the Paper (1874-1876), Reims Museum of Fine Arts (Reims, France)
• The Lovers (ca. 1875), National Gallery of Prague (Prague, Czech Republic)Woman with a Cat (ca. 1875), National Gallery of Art (Washington D. C., United States)
• The Canopy (Under the Trees of the Moulin de la Galette) (ca. 1875), Pushkin Museum (Moscow, Russia)
• Torso, Effect of the Sun (1875-1876), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• The Swing (1876), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• Seated Nude Woman (Anna's Torso) (1876), Pushkin Museum (Moscow, Russia)
• The Garden on Cortot Street in Montmartre (1876), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, United States)
• The First Step (1876), private collection
• Landscape and Nude Studies (ca. 1900), Soumaya Museum (Mexico City, Mexico).
• Woman in Black (ca. 1876), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)
• Seated Young Woman (The Pansy) (1876-1877), Barber Institute of Fine Arts (Birmingham, UK)
• The First Exit (1876-1877), National Gallery (London, UK)
• Jeanne Samary (1877), Comédie-Française (Paris, France)
• Jeanne Samary in a Low-cut Dress (1877), Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
• Leaving 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 Museum of Art (Baltimore, Maryland, United States)
• Sleeping Girl with a Cat (1880), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, U.S.A.)
• Clichy Square (circa 1880), Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
• The Rowers' Luncheon (1880-1881), Phillips Collection (Washington D. C., United States)
• Blonde Bathing Girl (1881), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, U.S.A.)
• On the Terrace (1881), Art Institute of Chicago.
• The Umbrellas (1881-1885), National Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Marie-Thérèse Durand-Ruel Sewing (1882), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, United States).
• Nude Woman in a Landscape (1883) Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• The Braid (Suzanne Valadon) (1884-1886), Museum Langmatt (Baden, Switzerland)
• The Great Bathers (1884-1887), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, United States)
• Maternity (Aline and Pierre) (1886), private collection
• Young Woman Bathing (1888), private collection
• Girl with Daisies (1889), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, U.S.A.)
• Girls at the Piano (1892), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• Bather with Long Hair (1895), Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris, France)
• Yvonne and Christine Lerolle at the Piano (1897), Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris, France)
• The Sleeper (1897), Collection Oskar Reinhart "Am Römerholz" (Winterthur, Switzerland)
• Landscape of Brittany (1902)
• Nude Woman Lying Down (1906-1907), Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris, France)
• Large Nude (Nude on the Cushions) (1907), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• Bust of Coco (1907-1908)
• Gabrielle with Jewels (1910), private collection
• Bathing Girl Drying Her Leg (ca. 1910), São Paulo Museum of Art (São Paulo, Brazil)
• Gabrielle with a Rose (1911), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)
• After the Bath (1912), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland)
• The Judgment of Paris (1913-1914), Hiroshima Museum of Art (Hiroshima, Japan)
• The Bathers (1918-1919), Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)

The Cabaret of Mother Anthony (1866)

It is an oil on canvas, now in the Nationalmuseum (Stockholm, Sweden), on a large canvas two meters high, where Renoir painted a scene from real life. In the work, painted in the house of Mère Anthony, Alfred Sisley can be recognized standing and Camille Pissarro with his back turned. The beardless man is Frank Lamy. In the background, with her back to us, we can make out Mme.

Anthony and in the foreground on the left, the maid Nana. This is a remarkable composition: the figures of the waitress and the seated man, cut off from the sides of the canvas, and the group of characters forming almost a semicircle, create a sense of real space.

From then on, Renoir's friends would always figure 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 bituminous tones of Gustave Courbet or resembles the brownish colors of Henri Fantin-Latour's group, which in turn evoke the old photographs of the 19th century.

Horseback Riding in the Forest of 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 the light, with the elegance of the black veil and the rose attached to the dress of the same color as the veil. Secondly, a range of very light colors blends the figures in the foreground with the landscape in a harmonious whole.

The Box (1874)

Oil on canvas, 80 × 63.5 cm, Courtlaud Institute Gallery (London, U.K.) Art critic Philippe Burty wrote of it that "the feigned, impassive figure of the lady, her white gloved hands, one of which holds cuff links and the other drowns in the muslin of the handkerchief, the head and bust of the turning man, are fragments of painting as worthy of attention as of praise."

Renoir was spreading over the canvas for the first time a harmonious and free wave of light color in a composition worthy of the lessons of the classical masters. The painting evokes vague reminiscences of Caravaggio's compositions, but even more of Édouard Manet's The Balcony. 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, on the small table, one recognizes Frank Lamy, Norbert Gœneutte and Georges Rivière; among the dancers, Lestringuez and Paul Lhote. In the center 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 familiar to the inhabitants of the neighborhood: that of a dance at the Moulin de la Galette. The vivacity of his style and the patches of light and shadow create a joyful 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 Ball: he had never been better inspired. It is a page of history, a precious monument of Parisian life, of rigorous accuracy.

No one before him had ever thought of writing down the facts of daily life on a canvas of such vast dimensions; it is an audacity whose success will reward him as it should. This work has, for the future, an importance that we are obliged to point out: it is a historical painting.

Landscape of Brittany (1902)

Renoir's work confirms that he traveled through the Gallic territory. It is evident that each landscape gave him new possibilities of creation. It was Brittany, a region in the northwest of 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 collection of the Soumaya Museum.

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.