A significant event that occurred in Paris in 1874 ushered in a new age in painting. Exhausted from the rigidity of the French art world’s ruling circles, a group of artists displayed their works at an impressionist exhibition. Then, Auguste Renoir, the maestro of secular portraiture, displayed his paintings alongside Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. The depth of color and texture on his paintings made them stand out. The artist was open about his love of tactile experiences, therefore he regarded plasticity as a crucial aspect of his creations. The author’s passion of life and capacity for enjoyment were evident in the works themselves, which spoke for themselves.
Early Life and Adolescence
The birthdate of Pierre-Auguste Renoir is February 25, 1841. The commune of Limoges, which is situated in southwest France, was his hometown. The artist was the sixth of the tailor Leonard’s seven children, along with seamstress Marguerite. Even though the family was struggling to make ends meet, the parents had enough time and love to give each of their children their undivided attention.
Although Pierre was an anxious and impressionable child growing up, Leonard and Marguerite were understanding of his peculiarities. When his son took his tailor’s chalk and pencils, his mother and father both pardoned him, as did his father when he scribbled on the walls of the home. The Renoirs relocated to Paris in 1844. Here, in the Cathedral of Saint-Eustache, Auguste joined the cathedral choir.
After hearing Auguste sing, Charles Gounod, the choirmaster, spent a few weeks trying to persuade Auguste’s parents to enroll their child in music lessons. But Pierre was more attracted to art than the false realm of noises. When his heir turned thirteen, Leonard sent him to work at the porcelain-making Levy Brothers factory. The child gained his drawing skills there, using his brush to create designs on dishes, pots, and vases.
The teenage Renoir painted cafe walls, shutters, and awnings in search of additional means of money after the company filed for bankruptcy in 1858. He imitated the works of François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Antoine Watteau, the Rococo artists. Biographers claim that the artist’s later work was impacted by this encounter.
The artist of “Rose” developed a fondness for bold hues and understated lines as a result of studying the paintings of the great artists of the eighteenth century. Auguste soon came to see how limited the framework of imitation work was for his goals. He enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in 1862. Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre, a Swiss painter who followed the academic school of drawing, served as his tutor.
This tradition dictates that only dark hues predominate in the visual palette and that works be written only on legendary themes. Such canvases were accepted by the Salon judges for the yearly formal show, providing a platform for aspiring painters to make their mark. French art was undergoing a revolution during the time Renoir was studying.
Painters from the Barbizon school increasingly used the interplay of light and shadow to show ordinary life on their canvases. Furthermore, well-known realist Gustave Courbet stated in public that a painter’s job is to capture reality, not idealized pictures painted in an academic manner. Renoir was aware of the revolutionary sentiments in the air, just like his classmates Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley.
One day during class, the friends stepped outside without Gleyre’s permission to prove their point, and they started painting everything around them outside. The forest of Fontainebleau was the first location the aspiring artists visited. For twenty years, this location served as an inspiration for the Impressionists’ masterpieces. Meeting Courbet there allowed Renoir to get his influence on the 1866 painting “Mother Antonie’s Tavern.” The canvas, which showed a realistic, unidealized image from everyday life, came to represent Auguste’s disavowal of the academic painting tradition.
Painting
Around the same time, around the start of the 1870s, the Impressionists reached the height of their creative development. Their best decade of creation was this one.
In terms of Renoir’s artistic destiny, these were also his most productive years. Impressive is not just the sheer number of his works but also their extraordinary range in genre. There are still lifes, landscapes, portraits, nudists, and commonplace scenes here. It is hard to focus on just one of them. To the master, they represent a live, trembling stream of life, and are all just links in a single chain.
Without deviating from the reality, his brush changed an ordinary maid into the foam-born goddess of beauty Aphrodite with astounding simplicity. From his earliest artistic endeavors, Renoir has this trait, as demonstrated by the picture “The Frog Pond” (also known as “Bathing on the Seine”).
Renoir’s paintings were especially sought after in the 1880s. The painter created paintings for affluent store owners and investors. His canvases were displayed at the Seventh World Exhibition in Paris, Brussels, and London.
The French impressionist’s latter years saw a shift in his subject matter from earlier paintings to portraits of children, allegorical characters, bathers, and odalisques. These pictures served as a metaphorical representation of youth, beauty, and health for the artist. The artist dedicated his painting to the joy of being, which he saw in the southern heat of Provence, the appeal of a woman’s figure, and a child’s innocent face.
Individual Life
Women were loved by the painter, and he felt the same way about them. If we were to enumerate all of his lovers and provide a brief history for each, the list would fill up a heavy tome. The artist’s models vowed that they would never get married. Actress Jeanne Samary, the well-known muse of the portraitist, claimed that Pierre wedded the women he painted in marriage with a single stroke of his brush.
Midway through the 1890s, Renoir—who was now well-known for his impressionist skills—went through a transitional period in his personal life. Lise Trehot, the artist’s longtime partner, got married and moved out. Pierre eventually started to become disinterested in impressionism and turned his attention back to the classics. He met Aline Charigot, a young seamstress, during this time, and they eventually got married.
Opposite his house, at Madame Camille’s dairy, the artist met the woman who would become his wife. It was impossible to ignore the lovers’ mutual desire to one another, even though Charigot was 20 years younger than her husband. Renoir described the well-built young woman as being quite “cozy”. Aline proved to be an excellent cook and wine connoisseur, and she was a lovely wife to the artist (albeit they didn’t get married until five years later, following the birth of their first son, Jean).
The artist’s life was made easier by his wife, who shielded him from everything that would obstruct his work. Charigot became widely respected very fast. Even the sexist Degas remarked that she resembled a queen visiting itinerant acrobats after seeing her once at an exhibition. It is well known that Renoir frequently engaged in sexual intercourse with his models during his marriage to Charigot.
It is true that Madame Renoir’s status remained unaffected by any of these sensual plots and passionate relationships because she was the artist’s lover, the mother of his children (they were married and had three sons: Pierre, Claude, and Jean), and the one who never left his side while he was unwell. Pierre’s health rapidly declined in 1897 as a result of complications from a fractured arm. The artist was confined to a wheelchair due to his rheumatism, but he still produced new works of art.
Henri Matisse, the founder of the Fauvist movement, once could not help but inquire about the practicality of such relentless effort, accompanied by continual suffering, when he visited the paraplegic Renoir at his studio on a regular basis. Auguste immediately responded to his buddy, telling him that although he was going through anguish, the beauty he had created would endure.
Demise
The impressionist’s normal life path was upset by the First World War. His wife Aline unexpectedly passed away from anxiety over her boys who had enlisted in the military. Despite being a widower and suffering from poverty and disease, Auguste persisted in his artistic endeavors because of his unwavering moral principles. He turned to models and the garden that developed on the slope of Mount Colette for inspiration when reality became unsatisfactory.
The well-known impressionist completed his final piece, Still Life with Anemones, before his away on December 3, 1919. Pneumonia was the reason for the death. Until his final breath, the 78-year-old artist remained an unwavering lover of sunlight and human happiness. The ailing elderly man was wheeled to the Louvre, where one of his paintings was kept, many months before to his passing. Today, Renoir’s creations grace European collections. The paintings In the Garden and Girl with a Fan, among others, are on display at the Hermitage. Even young students are familiar with the French artist’s works because they are featured in teaching resources that focus on impressionism’s golden age.