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 :. | Young Girl in a Lace Hat | Girl with Parasol (Aline Nunes) | Tilla Durieux | View at Dolce Acqua with the Borgho Antico the bridge over the Nervia and the Doria Castle Postcard | The Box at the Opera |
Related Artists:
Wassilij Grigorjewitsch Perow
Vasily Grigorevich Perov (Russian; real name Vasily Grigorevich Kridener ; 2 January 1834 (21 December 1833 Old Style) - 10 June (29 May Old Style) 1882) was a Russian painter and one of the founding members of Peredvizhniki, a group of Russian realist painters. Vasily Perov was born 2 January 1834 (21 December 1833 Old Style) in Tobolsk, being the illegitimate son of procurator, baron Grigory Karlovich Kridener. After completing a course at Arzamas uezd school, he was transferred to the Alexander Stupin art school also located in Arzamas. In 1853 he was admitted to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he learned from several renowned artists. In 1856 he was awarded with a minor silver medal for his sketch of a boy's head, presented to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Later the Academy gave him many other awards: in 1857 a major silver medal for Commissary of Rural Police Investigating, a minor golden medal for the Scene on a Grave and the Son of a Dyak Promoted to First Rank, and in 1861 a major golden medal for Sermon in a Village. After receiving the right to a state-paid trip abroad together with a golden medal, in 1862 Perov went to Western Europe, visiting several German cities, and then Paris. During this time he created paintings depicting scenes from European street life, such as the Vendor of statuettes, the Savoyard, the Organ-Grinder in Paris, the Musicians and the Bystanders, and the Paris Ragpickers. Returning to Moscow early, from 1865 to 1871 Perov created his masterpieces The Queue at The Fountain, A Meal in the Monastery, Last Journey, Troika, the Lent Monday, Arrival of a New Governess in a Merchant House, the Drawing Teacher, A Scene at the Railroad, the Last Tavern at Town Gate, the Birdcatcher, the Fisherman, and the Hunters at Rest.
Hieronymus Bosch
Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1450-1516, Flemish painter. His surname was originally van Aeken; Bosch refers to 's Hertogenbosch, where he was born and worked. Little is known of his life and training, although it is clear that he belonged to a family of painters. His paintings, executed in brilliant colors and with an uncanny mastery of detail, are filled with strangely animated objects, bizarre plants and animals, and monstrous, amusing, or diabolical figures believed to have been suggested by folk legends, allegorical poems, moralizing religious literature, and aspects of late Gothic art. Such works as the Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado) appear to be intricate allegories; their symbolism, however, is obscure and has consistently defied unified interpretation. Bosch clearly had an interest in the grotesque, the diabolical, the exuberant, and the macabre. He also may have been the first European painter to depict scenes of everyday life, although often with a strong element of the bizarre. King Philip II of Spain collected some of his finest creations. The Temptation of St. Anthony (Lisbon) and The Last Judgment were recurring themes. Other examples of his art may be seen in the Escorial and in Brussels. Examples of the Adoration of the Magi are in the Metropolitan Museum and in the Philadelphia Museum, which also has the Mocking of Christ. Bosch, who deeply influenced the work of Peter Bruegel the Elder, was hailed in the 20th cent. as a forerunner of the surrealists, and his work continues to influence many contemporary artists.
Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (13 March 1864 - 15 March 1941) was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association (Neue Kenstlervereinigung Menchen), Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group and later the Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four).