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 :. | Dance in the Country | Oarsmen at Chatou | Madame Renoir with a Dog | Portrait of Jeanne Samary | The Luncheon of the Boating Party |
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thomas creswick
Thomas Creswick (5 February 1811 - 28 December 1869) was an English landscape painter and illustrator, born in Sheffield, son of Thomas Creswick and Mary Epworth and educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham. At Birmingham he first began to paint. His earliest appearance as an exhibitor was in 1827, at the Society of British Artists in London; in the ensuing year he sent to the Royal Academy the two pictures named Llyn Gwynant, Morning, and Carnarvon Castle. About the same time he settled in London; and in 1836 he took a house in Bayswater. He soon attracted some attention as a landscape painter, and had a career of uniform and encouraging, though not signal success. In 1842 he was elected an associate, and in 1850 a full member of the Royal Academy, which, for several years before his death, numbered hardly any other full members representing this branch of art. In his early practice he set an example, then too much needed, of diligent study of nature out of doors, painting on the spot all the substantial part of several of his pictures. English and Welsh streams may be said to have formed his favourite subjects, and generally British rural scenery, mostly under its cheerful, calm and pleasurable aspects, in open daylight. This he rendered with elegant and equable skill, color rather grey in tint, especially in his later years, and more than average technical accomplishment; his works have little to excite, but would, in most conditions of public taste, retain their power to attract. Creswick was industrious and extremely prolific; he produced, besides a steady outpouring of paintings, numerous illustrations for books. He was personally genial, a dark, bulky man, somewhat heavy and graceless in aspect in his later years. He died at his house in Bayswater, Linden Grove, after a few years of declining health. Among his principal works may be named England (1847); Home by the Sands, and a Squally Day (1848); Passing Showers (1849); The Wind on Shore, a First Glimpse of the Sea, and Old Trees (1850); A Mountain Lake, Moonrise (1852); Changeable Weather (1865); also the London Road, a Hundred Years ago; The Weald of Kent; the Valley Mill (a Cornish subject); a Shady Glen; the Windings of a River; the Shade of the Beech Trees; the Course of the Greta; the Wharfe; Glendalough, and other Irish subjects, 1836 to 1840; the Forest Farm Frith for figures, and Ansdell for animals, occasionally worked in collaboration with Creswick.
Cornelis Van Leemputten
(1841-1902) was a Belgian painter. Born in Werchter, Cornelius van Leemputten is predominantly known for his landscapes with sheep, similar to the style of Charles Jacque. He began his painting career without formal training. He was well-known for his barnyard subjects. Leemputten eventually became a pupil of the Academy of Antwerp, though his style remained primarily self-taught. Van Leemputten participated across several international exhibitions and received gold medals in Ghent in 1883, Edinburgh in 1886, Port Adelaide in 1887 and in Berlin in 1896. In 1895, he received the Knight of the Order of Leopold (Belgium).
Josabeth Sjoberg
1812-1882