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 :. | The Vintagers | Young Girl With Daisies | The Promenade | Mosque at Algiers | After the Bath(Little Bather) |
Related Artists:
Albert Fitch Bellows
Nov.29.1829-Nov.24.1883, American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, was born at Milford, Massachusetts. He first studied architecture and opened his own architectural firm in 1849, but quickly turned to painting. From 1850 to 1856 he taught at the New England School of Design in Boston. He resigned his post to travel and study abroad, and spent time in Paris and at the Royal Academy at Antwerp as well as in England. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1857, becoming a full member in 1861, and he settled in New York City in 1858 on his return to America. Bellows spent most of his remaining career in New York, though he briefly moved to Boston. He visited Europe again in 1867. In New York he kept a studio in the same building as many of the notable Hudson River School artists of the time. His landscape work of the 1860s is fully in the late Hudson River School tradition, though Bellows depicted people more prominently in his landscapes than most other artists. He excelled at figurative scenes. Bellows also differed from most Hudson River School artists in that he became skilled at watercolor, and authored a respected book on the subject titled "Water-Color Painting: Some Facts and Authorities in Relation to Its Durability". He eventually maintained two studios, one for oil paintings and one for watercolor. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society, and an honorary member of the Royal Belgian Society of Water-Colorists. Bellows also mastered etching??along with Samuel Colman he was possibly the only other Hudson River School artist to do so??and became a member of the New York Etching Club, the Philadelphia Society of Etchers and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in London, England, an esteemed professional organization whose members included James McNeil Whistler and Francis Seymour Haden. He died in Auburndale,
Piotr Michalowski
(July 2, 1800 - June 9, 1855) was a Polish painter of the Romantic period, especially known for his many portraits. His talent was long underestimated, but he was re-discovered by Pablo Picasso in 1948. When the painter visited Poland, he saw Michałowski's work in the Warsaw National Museum and shouted, "Here, painter!" The Sukiennice Museum, a division of the National Museum in Krakew, contains a room devoted to Michałowski's work.
Richard Wilson
Welsh Romantic Painter, ca.1713-1782 was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' Wilson is considered to be the father of landscape painting in Britain. The son of a clergyman, Wilson was born in Penegoes, Montgomeryshire. The family was an old and respected one, and Wilson was first cousin to Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. In 1729 he went to London where he began as a portrait painter, under the apprentership of an obscure artist, Thomas Wright. From 1750 to 1757 he was in Italy and adopted landscape on the advice of Francesco Zuccarelli. Painting in Italy and afterwards in England, he was the first major British painter to primarily concentrate on landscape. He composed well, but saw and rendered only the general effects of nature thereby creating a personal, ideal style influenced by Claude Lorrain and the Dutch landscape tradition. According to John Ruskin, he "paints in a manly way, and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of colour." He concentrated on painting Italianate landscapes and landscapes based upon classsical literature, but when his painting The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (c.1759-60) won high acclaim he gained many commissions from wealthy families seeking classical potrayals of their estates.