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 Woman with a Veil | Madam Charpentier Children | Tulipes | Nude in an Armchair | woman in blue |
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Bernardo Bellotto
Italian Rococo Era Painter, C.1721-1780 Italian painter and draughtsman. He was a view painter who worked in Italy and later at the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Warsaw. The nephew and almost certainly the pupil of Canaletto, outside Italy he signed his works de Canaletto and hence became known as Canaletto. He painted both topographical and imaginary views in a style independent of his uncle's, distinguished by cold colour and by the austere geometry of architectural masses.
Giuseppe Canella
(28 July 1788 - 11 September 1847), also referred to as Giuseppe Canella the Elder, was an Italian painter. Initially trained by his father Giovanni, an architect, fresco painter and set designer, Giuseppe Canella started out producing stage sets and decorating stately homes in Verona and Mantua. It may have been under the influence of Pietro Ronzoni, a landscape painter of international renown active in Verona, that he took up landscape. The first views were not produced until 1815, after a short stay in Venice. After making his debut at the Esposizione di Belle Arti di Brera of 1818, he made a long journey through Spain, the Netherlands and France for study purposes. The set of 13 landscapes shown at the Esposizione di Belle Arti di Brera in 1831 proved a great success with the public and critics alike, not least due to the fame achieved in Paris with works exhibited in the Salons, commissions from Louis Philippe of Orleans and the award of a gold medal in 1830. He returned to Milan in 1832 and devoted his energies to urban views characterised by an interest in the events of contemporary life and an atmospheric form of portrayal in evident competition with Giovanni Migliara. Landscape came to predominate as from 1835 with subjects drawn from the Lombard countryside and lakes. The focus on poor and humble aspects of life formed part of the artistes fundamental naturalism and coincided with a moralistic approach derived from the novelist Alessandro Manzoni. Crucial importance attaches in the artistes mature period to his trip to Rome and Naples in 1838-39.
Julius Payer
Julius Johannes Ludovicus Ritter von Payer (2 September 1841 - 19 August 1915) was an Austro-Hungarian arctic explorer and an Arctic landscape artist. Born Julius Payer, his father Franz Anton Rudolf Payer was a retired officer who died when Julius was only fourteen. Payer attended k.k. cadet school in Lobzowa near Krakew (now Poland). Between 1857 and 1859 he studied at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt (near Vienna). In 1859 he served as a sub-lieutenant with the 36th. infantry regiment in Verona, Northern Italy. He participated in the 1859 Battle of Solferino. Between 1860 and 1863 he served at the garrison in Verona, Italy. In 1863 Payer was assigned as a history teacher to the cadet school in Eisenstadt, Austria. After promotion to the rank of lieutenant first class he was posted to the garrison of Venetia. In 1862 he started exploratory tours of the Italian Alps and Hohe Tauern in his free time. From 1864-1868 he explored the Adamello-Presanella Group and the Ortler Alps. He was the first to climb Adamello (3554m). His tours resulted in creating a detailed topographical map at a scale 1:56,000. Due to his achievements, Payer was transferred to the Austrian Military Cartographical Institute in Vienna.