French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity 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, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | Rocky Crags at L'Estaque | The Duck Pond | Self-Portrait | Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey | Child with Cat (Julie Manet) |
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Johann Jakob Biedermann
b Winterthur, 7 Oct 1763; d Aussersihl, Schwyz, 10 April 1830
Albert Lebourg
Montfort-sur-Risle 1849-Rouen 1928 French painter. He had an early interest in architecture and studied under the architect Drouin at the Ecole Municipale de Dessin in Rouen. He became increasingly interested in art and through Drouin met the landscape painter Victor Delamarre (1811-68) who advised and taught him. Giving up architecture altogether, he then attended the Ecole Municipale de Peinture et de Dessin in Rouen under Gustave Morin (1809-86). In 1871 he met the collector Laperlier through whom he obtained the post of professor of drawing at the Societe des Beaux-Arts in Algiers. He remained there from 1872 to 1877, producing works such as Street in Algiers (1875; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.). He also experimented with depicting a single site in a variety of different lights, in a manner similar to the late works of Monet. After giving up his teaching post in Algeria in 1877 he returned to Paris where he attended Jean-Paul Laurens's studio from 1878 to 1880. It was at this point that he became aware of Impressionism; later he became friendly with Degas, Monet and Sisley. He first exhibited at the Salon de la Societe des Artistes Franeais in 1883 and again in 1886,
Isidre Nonell
(November 30, 1873, Barcelona, Spain - February 21, 1911, Barcelona) a Catalonian painter and drawer belonging to post-impressionism known for his expressive portrayal of the socially marginalized of Barcelona society. (He is also said to belong to modernism and postmodernism.) Isidre Nonell was born in 1872 (not in 1873 as indicated by some biographers). His parents, Isidre Nonell i Torras de Arenys de Mar and Àngela Monturiol i Franc of Barcelona, owned a small but prosperous factory of soup noodles. Together with his childhood friend, Joaquim Mir, with whom he attended the same school in the neighborhood of Sant Pere in the old part of town in Barcelona, he developed artistic ambitions at an early age. His early teachers included Josep Mirabent, Gabriel Martenez Alt and Llu Graner. From 1893 to 1895 he studied at the Escola de Belles Arts de Barcelona (Fine Arts School of Barcelona). He met Ricard Canals, Ramen Pichot, Juli Vallmitjana, Adrie Gual, and Joaquin Sunyer with whom he developed an interest in landscape painting, studying light. The study of sunlight and its effects on color were a main part of Impressionism, which was then active. They were called the "Saffron Group" for the warm tones they used, as well as the "Sant Marte Group" after the town they painted in. In 1894, he began producing illustrations for La Vanguardia. He later drew for other periodicals, including LeEsquella de la Torratxa, Barcelona Cemica, Pel & Ploma, and Forma. In 1896, Nonell went with Ricard Canals and Juli Vallmitjana to the spa town of Caldes de Boe in the Catalonian Pyrenees to work at the spa run by Vallmitjana's family. There, he saw a large number of people suffering from the illness of cretinism, which became a subject of his paintings. In February 1897, he went to Paris with Ricard Canals. There he exhibited and shared a studio with Picasso. He returned to Barcelona in 1900. At the beginning of 1901, he made paintings of women, such as gypsy and working-class women, and still lifes. He exhibited in the Sala Par in Barcelona twice, in 1902 and 1903. The reaction to his works of poor gypsy women was very hostile.