Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Auguste Renoir’s painting is a celebration of life. Throughout his career, despite periods of doubt, crisis and discouragement, and despite the handicap and suffering inflicted by illness, he strove to capture the happiness of the moment.

At the age of 14, Auguste Renoir first learned the trade of porcelain painter. This gave him a taste for light, transparent tones. He regularly visited the Louvre, where he admired the works of Peter Paul Rubens and 18th-century French painters such as Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher. In March 1862, he passed the entrance exam for the École des Beaux-Arts (he was officially enrolled on April¹ ), while at the same time enrolling in Charles Gleyre’s private studio, where he made friends with Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley in the last months of 1863. From this year onwards, Renoir painted with them at Chailly-en-Bière, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest; here he met Narcisse Diaz, who encouraged him to lighten his palette. 1863 was also the year of the Salon des Refusés, created by Napoleon III, where those excluded from the official Salon could show their work. Edouard Manet sent Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which was rejected by the official Salon.

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