Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir [ pjɛːʁ oˈgyst ʁəˈnwaːʁ ] (born February 25, 1841 in Limoges , Limousin , † December 3, 1919 in Cagnes-sur-Mer , Côte d'Azur ), often just called Auguste Renoir , was one of the most important French painters of impressionism .

Life

Childhood and youth

Renoir was born to a working class family. His father was a tailor and his mother a tailor. When Pierre-Auguste was three years old, the family moved to Paris and found accommodation near the Louvre , which at the time was not only a museum but also housed offices and living quarters.

At the age of 13 Renoir started an apprenticeship as a porcelain painter . At the age of 15, he was already able to do this so well that the manufactory entrusted him with sophisticated painting work that was otherwise reserved for experienced porcelain painters. He was able to live independently from his wages and even support his parents. Around this time, however, mechanical printing processes for porcelain took hold, and the factory had to close when he was 17 years old. Renoir now had to make a living by painting fans and awnings and coloring coats of arms.

Dancer, 1874 (Danseuse)

Renoir's impressionist phase

1861–1864 Renoir studied painting in the class of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre . Soon, however, he looked for other artistic role models than his teacher, namely Gustave Courbet and Díaz de la Peña , whom he had met by chance while painting in the forest and who encouraged him to always paint from life and the model. He made friends with Claude Monet , Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille and painted with them outdoors. In 1864 a picture of him was first accepted for the Paris Salon , often simply called the Salon. In the Salon of 1868 he was represented with the picture Lise with the parasol , for which Lise Tréhot was the model. She was Renoir's lover from about 1865 to 1871.

His outdoor experiences also had an impact on his studio pictures. Critics took notice of him and praised the freshness and naturalness of his pictures. Nevertheless, there were hardly any buyers. In 1869 Renoir lived in such abject poverty that, as he later wrote himself, he did not even have something to eat every day.

The Lodge, 1874 (La loge)

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Renoir volunteered for a cavalry regiment, but was only stationed far away from the fighting. In 1871, when he returned to Paris, he was caught in the uprising of the Paris Commune . Forced into conscription by the Communards, he got into great difficulties when he tried to flee Paris and was captured by the troops on the other side.

After the war he soon got back in touch with his friends Monet and Sisley and spent a lot of time with them and with Édouard Manet in the summers of the 1870s . A well-known painting by him from that period shows the Monet family in the garden of their house in Argenteuil. Manet has his own interpretation of the same subject. Both Manet and Renoir had placed their easels side by side and painted the same scene.

Dance in the garden of the Moulin de la Galette, 1876
( Bal au Moulin de la Galette )

Renoir loved to depict social events and to translate joie de vivre into pictures. Despite the movements of the people portrayed as in dance in the Moulin de la Galette and the exuberance, he integrated small still lifes .

Unlike Monet and the other Impressionists, Renoir continued to endeavor to have his pictures included in the Salon, but in 1874 he participated with great enthusiasm in the preparation and implementation of the first Impressionist exhibition, as well as the exhibition of 1876.

He managed to sell pictures to the art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Père-Martin. Durand-Ruel, a great patron of the Impressionists, gave him money so that Renoir could rent a studio. However, this income was so tight that it was just enough to make a living.

His financial situation turned for the better in the mid-1870s when Renoir met the customs officer Victor Chocquet and the publisher Georges Charpentier and received orders from them for portraits and a large panel painting. Thanks to the advocacy of the influential Madame Charpentier , his circle of acquaintances in better society expanded, and in the following years he received so many portrait commissions that they even became annoying to him at times.

In the years 1881/1882 Renoir made three major trips to Algeria, Italy and again to Algeria. In 1882 he portrayed the composer Richard Wagner in Palermo .

Post-impressionist phase of life

Moulin Huet Bay (1883)

After a stay in Italy in 1881, while reading a handbook for painters written around 1400, he orientated himself heavily on Raphael's frescoes and on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , the Ingres period or dry period began . Renoir began to orientate himself from scratch, he turned away from the spontaneous and drew the shapes more sharply, but stuck to the motifs full of joie de vivre. He also turned away from impressionism and towards classicism . A trip in September 1883 took him to the island of Guernsey , where he created a number of paintings, including Moulin Huet Bay .

The great bathers, 1887 (Les Grandes Baigneuses )

Around 1883 Renoir got into a creative crisis. At that time he sensed a lukewarm disinterest in the audience and in the critics, and he said about himself that he was in an artistic dead end. The work of those years culminated in the painting The Great Bathers from 1887, in which he had invested years in preliminary studies and which contains a wealth of art-historical quotations.

On March 23, 1885, his lover Aline Charigot, whom he met in the early 1880s and who had accompanied him to Italy, gave birth to his first child, his son Pierre Renoir , who later became known as an actor. On April 14, 1890, Renoir married Aline. The second son Jean Renoir , born in 1894, later took up the profession of film director. The third son Claude, also called "Coco", was born on August 4, 1901.

At the end of the 1880s he found his joy in color and in fluid, sensual painting. The departure from his Impressionist painting style of the 1870s, however, remained permanent.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, around 1910

Around 1892, Renoir showed the first signs of rheumatoid arthritis . At the time, gout was mistakenly diagnosed. After several spa stays, he noticed that he was doing better in the mild Mediterranean climate, and in 1907 he moved permanently to Les Collettes , a country house with a large garden in Cagnes-sur-Mer near Nice. A museum was built there in his honor in the 20th century.

Despite his illness, he painted incessantly. Renoir was now in a wheelchair and, according to his own statements, had the brush tied to his hand every day because he could no longer hold it. Through Aristide Maillol Renoir got the opportunity to work with his student Richard Guino. With this collaboration Renoir was able to once again produce works such as u. a. Venus Victrix, The Great Washerwoman (1917) and Mother and Child (1916) realize.

Pïerre-Auguste Renoir died in 1919 at the age of 78 and left around 6,000 works: landscapes, still lifes, portraits of adults and children, nudes, pictures of dancing and family life. His grave is in the cemetery in Essoyes in the Aube department in Champagne .

Works (selection)

image	title	When originated	Size, material	Exhibition / collection / owner
	Flowers in greenhouse	1864	Oil on canvas	Hamburger Kunsthalle
	Mademoiselle Romaine Lascaux	1864	81 × 65 cm, oil on canvas	Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland
	The painter Bazille at his easel	1867	105 × 73 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Diana as a huntress	1867	197 × 132 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	Lise with the parasol	1867	184 × 115 cm, oil on canvas	Folkwang Museum in Essen
	The circus clown	1868	192 × 128 cm, oil on canvas	Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo
	In summer	1868	85 × 59 cm, oil on canvas	Old National Gallery in Berlin
	The Sisley couple	1868	105 × 75 cm, oil on canvas	Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne
	La Grenouillère	1869	66 × 86 cm, oil on canvas	Swedish National Museum in Stockholm
	The walk	1870	80 × 64 cm, oil on canvas	J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
	Odalisque	1870	69 × 123 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	Pont-Neuf	1872	74 × 93 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	Madame Monet on the divan	1872	54 × 73 cm, oil on canvas	Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon
	Claude Monet, painting in his garden at Argenteuil	1873	46 × 60 cm, oil on canvas	Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut
	Madame Monet and her son	1874	51 × 68 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	The lodge	1874	80 × 64 cm, oil on canvas	Courtauld Institute of Art in London
	dancer	1874	142 × 93 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	The Parisian	1874	82 × 101 cm, oil on canvas	National Museum Cardiff in Cardiff
	After the bath	1876	(glazed): 92.4 × 73.2 cm, oil on canvas	Belvedere in Vienna
	The swing	1876	92 × 73 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Bal au Moulin de la Galette	1876	131 × 175 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	The excursion of the conservatory	1876-1877	187 × 117 cm, oil on canvas	Barnes Foundation in Merion near Philadelphia
	Jeanne Samary	1878	173 × 102 cm, oil on canvas	General Staff Building in Saint Petersburg
	Madame Charpentier and her children	1878	131 × 88 cm, oil on canvas	Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
	The wave	1879	64.8 × 99.2 cm, oil on canvas	Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago
	Rowers in Chatou	1879	81 × 100 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	The rowers' breakfast	1880-1881	130 × 173 cm, oil on canvas	Phillips Collection in Washington, DC
	The Doge's Palace in Venice	1881	54.5 × 65 cm, oil on canvas	Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts
	Le Grand Canal, Venise (Gondole)	1881	54 × 64.8 cm, oil on canvas	At Koller in Zurich in December 2014, US auctioned
	Fruits of the south	1881	51 × 68.5 cm, oil on canvas	Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago
	The umbrellas	1881-1885	180 × 115 cm, oil on canvas	National Gallery in London
	Richard Wagner	1882	53 × 46 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Dance in the city	1882-1883	180 × 90 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Dance in the country	1882-1883	180 × 90 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Portrait of Paul Haviland	1884	57 × 43 cm, oil on canvas	Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
	Children's afternoon in Wargemont	1884	Oil on canvas	Museum Alte Nationalgalerie , Berlin
	The child with a whip	1885	81 × 92 cm, oil on canvas	General Staff Building in Saint Petersburg
	The great bathers	1887	115 × 170 cm, oil on canvas	Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia
	Young girls at the piano	1892	116 × 90 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Jean Renoir , sewing	1900	55 × 46 cm, oil on canvas	Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne
	The judgment of Paris	1908	81 × 100 cm, oil on canvas	Phillips Collection in Washington, DC
	Bathers drying their legs	1910-1911	84 × 65 cm, oil on canvas	Museu de Arte de São Paulo in São Paulo
	Sitting girl	1910-1917	Black chalk	Albertina (Vienna)
	Rest after the bath	1918-1919	110 × 160 cm, oil on canvas	Musée d'Orsay in Paris

reception

According to the art critic Raymond Cogniat, Renoir's life can be divided into four phases: "The first, from the beginnings of the painter to the first years of Impressionism, includes family scenes, portraits of relatives and friends. In the second period, the commissioned portraits are made, so receives Renoir's recognition in the discerning bourgeoisie. The third period shows more elaborate paintings, contours and clarity of the representations become more professional. Complete independence is found in the fourth phase, in which his environment such as children, wife and housemaid Gabrielle are included ".

In the exhibition Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting conceived by curator Colin Bailey at the Frick Collection in New York City 2012, Renoir can be experienced not only as a color connoisseur , but also especially as a clothing fashion connoisseur. Only his portrait-format full-body pictures from the years between 1874 and 1885 were included in the show.

The film Eine Landpartie (shot in 1936, published in 1946) by his son Jean Renoir is a homage to his father, in this film he recalls Pierre-Auguste Renoir's impressionist paintings of land parties and canoeists. 1952 was created with Joy of Living; The Art of Renoir is an Oscar- nominated short film by Jean Oser that deals with the life and work of the artist.

The film Renoir , shot in 2012, shows the protagonist Renoir and the actress Catherine Hessling , one of his last nude models, who was married to his son Jean Renoir.

Eponyms

The asteroid (6677) Renoir and the Mercury crater Renoir are named after him.

literature

• Edmond Renoir: My brother Auguste Renoir. The letter from 1879 . Translated from the French by Elisabeth Edl. Piet Meyer, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-905799-02-6 .
• Jean Renoir : My father Auguste Renoir. (Original title: Renoir ). Diogenes, Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-22425-7 .
• Julius Meier-Graefe : Renoir . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-458-32556-5 .
• Bruce Bernard (Ed.): The Great Impressionists . Delphin, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7735-5323-4 .
• Auguste Renoir. Paintings 1862–1917. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Kunsthalle Tübingen . DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3594-6 .
• Ingrid Mössinger, Karin Sagner (Eds.): Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Painted like silk. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Chemnitz art collections . Hirmer, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7774-4461-1
• Karin Sagner: Renoir and his women. Ideals on the screen - seasoned women in life. With a foreword by Jacques Renoir (great-grandson). Sandmann, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-938045-67-1 .

Web links

Commons : Pierre-Auguste Renoir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Pierre-Auguste Renoir  in the German Digital Library
• Search for Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• Works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir at Zeno.org .
• Pierre-August Renoir, Catalog raisonnée. Publication by the publishing house and gallery Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 2007
• Renoir. “Between bohemian and bourgeoisie” - the early years. Website for the exhibition from April to August 2012 at the Kunstmuseum Basel
• Anke Rebbert: December 3rd, 1919 - anniversary of the death of Pierre-Auguste Renoir WDR ZeitZeichen on December 3rd, 2019 (podcast)

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Nationalgallery , Moulin Huet Bay , accessed June 15, 2011.
2. ↑ Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Aline Charigot . In: Tatjana Kuschtewskaja : Secrets of beautiful women. Famous artists and their models . Grupello Verlag, Düsseldorf 2018, ISBN 978-3-89978-301-8 , pp. 82–91.
3. ^ Website of the city of Cagnes-sur-mer with Musée Renoir (fr) ( Memento of October 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Neret, Gilles: Renoir, Taschen Verlag, Cologne, 2019, pp. 468–469
5. ↑ Neret, Gilles: Renoir, Taschen Verlag, Cologne, 2019, p. 224
6. ↑ According to Bailey, the underlying facts were: “Renoir's father and brothers were tailors. His mother and many of his friends were seamstresses. "
7. ↑ Deutschlandradio Kultur from February 16, 2012: “Big Throws” - The Frick Collection in New York shows Pierre-Auguste Renoir's full-body pictures.
8. ↑ Pierre-Auguste and Jean Renoir in the Musée d´Orsay - childhood in the studio. Accessed December 3, 2019 (German).