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 :. | Albert Cahen d'Anvers | Yvonne and Christine Lerolle Playing the Piano | La Grenouillere | Reclining Nude | Beach Scene |
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Wyatt Eaton
(May 6, 1849 - June 7, 1896) was an Canadian/American portrait and figure painter, remembered as one of the founders of the Society of American Artists. Born in Philipsburg, Quebec, Lower Canada, Eaton was a student of the National Academy of Design, New York. In 1872, he moved to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Leon Gerôme. During this time, he made the acquaintance of Jean-François Millet at Barbizon, and was also influenced by his friend Jules Bastien-Lepage. After his return to the United States in 1877, he became a teacher in the Cooper Institute, and opened a studio in New York City. He became one of the founders of the Society of American Artists, in which he was the first secretary. Eaton died from tuberculosis at Newport, Rhode Island on June 7, 1896.
Jan Van Eyck
1395-1441 Flemish Jan Van Eyck Locations Painter and illuminator, brother of Hubert van Eyck. According to a 16th-century Ghent tradition, represented by van Vaernewijck and Lucas d Heere, Jan trained with his brother Hubert. Pietro Summonte assertion (1524) that he began work as an illuminator is supported by the fine technique and small scale of most of Jan works, by manuscript precedents for certain of his motifs, and by his payment in 1439 for initials in a book (untraced) for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Jan is first documented in The Hague in August 1422 as an established artist with an assistant and the title of Master, working for John III, Count of Holland (John of Bavaria; reg 1419-25), who evidently discovered the artist while he was bishop (1389-1417) of the principality of Liege. Jan became the court official painter and was paid, with a second assistant when the work increased in 1423, continuously, probably until the count death in January 1425.
Henriette Ronner-Knip
was a Dutch painter. Born Henriëtte Knip in Amsterdam, she moved at a young age to Den Bosch and was until 1850 active in Sint-Michielsgestel and Boxtel. That year she married Feico Ronner and moved to Belgium, first to Brussels and in 1878 to Elsene. She studied with her father, Joseph August Knip. She was best known for her paintings of subjects from nature, especially cats and dogs.