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 Toilette Woman Combing Her Hair (mk06) | Girl with a Fan | Aline Charigot(Madame Renoir) | Reclining Nude | Monet Painting in his Garden |
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El Greco
Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614 Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures. In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals.
CAROTO, Giovanni Francesco
Italian Painter, 1480-1555 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance, active mainly in his native city of Verona. He initially apprenticed under Liberale da Verona (1445-1526/1529), a conservative painter infused with the style of Mantegna. Caroto after a stay in Milan, began responding to the other influences from Francesco Bonsignori, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Giulio Romano; but he never lost a certain individuality and his rich Veronese color. He is perhaps best known for having trained, along with the younger Antonio Badile, the prominent Mannerist painter, Paolo Veronese, who was active mainly in Venice. Good examples of his art are in the Castello, Milan, the Chiesa de Carite, Mantua, in the Uffizi and Pitti, Florence, and in the museums of Dresden, Budapest, etc.
SALZILLO, Francisco
Spanish sculptor (b. 1707, Murcia, d. 1783, Murcia). Spanish sculptor of Italian descent. He was trained by his father, Nicol Salzillo (1672-1727), a Neapolitan sculptor who had settled in Murcia, whose first documented work is dated 1700. Francisco also studied with the Jesuits and was taught drawing and sculpture by the cleric and painter Manuel Senchez ( fl 1731-9). He entered the Dominican Order in Murcia as a novice but left to take charge of his father's studio at the latter's death in 1727. Francisco was assisted by his brothers, Juan Antonio Salzillo and Patricio Salzillo, a priest, and by his sister, Ines Salzillo, who specialized in painting carved religious statues. In 1746 Francisco married Juana Vallejo Martenez, and in 1755 he was appointed escultor y modelista by the municipal government (ayuntamiento) and Inspector to the Inquisition for painting and sculpture in Murcia. In 1763 he established an academy