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 Harsh and The Pearly | Young Girl with a Parasol | Place Clichy | Ambrois Vollard | The Harvesters |
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Friedrich Carl Groger
(14 October 1766, Plön - 9 November 1838, Hamburg) was a north-German portrait painter and lithographer. One of the most respected portraitists of his time in northern Germany, his works are to be found in several museums, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as well as in north German, Holstein and Danish private collections. Gröger was the son of a tailor in Plön, where he grew up in modest circumstances. His parents wanted him to become a tailor or wood turner and opposed his early artistic activities. He was largely self taught in painting, though he had some contact in Lebeck with Tischbein and in 1785 was in the city of Lebeck, where he met Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, his first, loyalest and lifelong friend - the Grögersweg in Hamburg-Barmbek named after him links the Tischbeinstraße with the Aldenrathsweg. From 1789 he studied at Berlin's Akademie der Kenste. He and Aldenrath then went together to Hamburg, then on a joint study trip to Dresden and Paris, then back to Lebeck, where he worked until 1807. They then alternated between Hamburg, Copenhagen, Kiel and Lebeck, before finally settling in Hamburg in 1814. In 1792 Gröger was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung gemeinnetziger Tätigkeit‎ in Lebeck. Gröger developed from a miniature painter into a portrait painter, who towards the end of his life preferred three quarter bust portraits. Aldenrath took over the miniature painting side of their joint business. After lithography developed in northern Germany, they both worked in this medium individually as well as jointly under the business name Firma Gröger & Aldenrath.
Jules Joseph Lefebvre
(Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, 14 March 1836 - Paris, 24 February 1911) was a French figure painter. Lefebvre entered the École nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Leon Cogniet. He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1861. Between 1855 and 1898, he exhibited 72 portraits in the Paris Salon. In 1891, he became a member of the French Academie des Beaux-Arts. He was an instructor at the Academie Julian in Paris. He is chiefly important as an excellent and sympathetic teacher who numbered many Americans among his 1500 or more pupils. Some of his famous students were the Scottish-born landscape painter William Hart, as long as Georges Rochegrosse, Felix Vallotton, and many more. He was long a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women. Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). Among his many decorations were a first-class medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and the medal of honor in 1886. He was a Commander of the Legion of Honor and a member of the Institut de France.
Charles conder
English-born Australian Painter, 1868-1909 English painter, active in Australia and France. He was sent to Australia in 1884 to learn surveying under his uncle W. J. Conder. After about two years in survey camps, he attended evening classes at the Royal Art Society, Sydney; in 1887 he worked as a lithographic draughtsman for the Illustrated Sydney News. Tom Roberts, then in Sydney on a visit from Melbourne, was among the open-air landscape painters that he knew at this time. He taught Conder some of the principles of Impressionism, such as truth to the momentary effect of light and to colour values, and the rejection of the academic ideal of high finish. The most important painting of Conder's Sydney years, the Departure of the 'SS Orient' from Circular Quay, 1888 (1888; Sydney, A.G. NSW), already showed a distinct personal style, combining humour with nostalgia and selective observation with decorative finesse of handling and design. In December 1888 Conder joined Roberts and Arthur Streeton in Melbourne. During the following summers they painted together at the outer suburbs of Mentone, Box Hill and Eaglemont