Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Portraits Music Debussy
Pierre Auguste Renoir, one of the most celebrated French painters (1841-1919), was the second to last of five children. His father was a modest craftsman who, facing difficulties making ends meet, moved with his family to Paris in 1845, when Renoir was four years old. He spent his early years in working-class neighborhoods where he worked as a porcelain decorator and fan painter.
He began his career in a Chinese porcelain shop in Paris, where he painted subjects that exuded sweetness and sentimentality inherited from the Rococo. He then went to Gleyre's studio, where he came into contact with Impressionist painters such as Sisley and Monet. In his early years, he was also influenced by the Barbizon school, especially the painting of Gustave Courbet. Renoir has always been considered the representative of the most sensual Impressionism, and one of the most recognized Impressionists for his flower and scene
Renoir possesses a vibrant and luminous palette that makes him a very personal Impressionist. He stands out especially for his representation of life and the search for inner beauty that he carries out in his portraits. He usually focuses on the faces of women or girls, where he manages to express innocence, the harmony of being, and an expansive goodness.
The female nude is a subject that obsessed him; its thick forms may recall Rubens, and his loose, highly chromatic brushstroke, Titian.
His technique is based on the powerful light of the skin, which contrasts with other strong colors. The brightness of the eyes is highlighted with the blacks of the pupils and eyelashes. The brushstroke creates a drawing outlined in the exact place, but without being a hard or realistic drawing, but rather free and dynamic. The Impressionist technique allows him to create an atmosphere that emanates from the face itself.
In 1878, Renoir distanced himself from the Impressionist group and sought success in the official salons. The
In 1878, Renoir distanced himself from the Impressionist group and sought success in the official salons. His abandonment of Impressionist principles intensified when, from 1881 onward, numerous trips to Normandy, Algiers, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily awakened his admiration for a certain classical ideal of beauty (Pompeian painting, Ingres, Raphael). This led him to question the value of the spontaneity of his earlier technique, gradually moving away from atmospheric effects in search of a more defined style. The subject of women, in which the artist clearly showed great interest throughout his life, generally adopted a treatment of great consistency and classical resonance.
Renoir's financial difficulties ended with the success of the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in New York. In 1892, he held a retrospective exhibition at the Durand-Ruel salons. Two years later, his son Jean (the filmmaker Jean Renoir) was born, and Gabrielle Renard, his wife Aline's cousin, entered the painter's home at the age of sixteen to helping with household chores, although she eventually became his favorite model. Jean wrote: "The spirit inherent in boys and girls, in creatures and trees, inhabitants of the world he created, held as much purity as Gabrielle's naked body. And finally, Renoir revealed his own being through this nakedness."
From that moment on, successes followed one after another. However, neither his arthritis, which led him to settle in Provence in search of a warmer climate—he underwent surgery in 1910 on both knees, a hand, and a foot—nor the enlistment of his sons Pierre and Jean during the First World War, nor even the death of his wife in 1915, managed to diminish his enthusiasm for painting.
Music: Debussy - Andantino con moto allegro - Parnassus Trio