Text d. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Renoir was born at Limoges, and at the age of thirteen began to earn his living as a painter on porcelain. This early apprenticeship left a certain trace on his art which was always decorative in spite of its later realism. In time Renoir saved up enough money to go to Paris and became a pupil of Gleyre in whose studio he met Sisley and Monet. Working together in 1868-1869, Monet and Renoir made some paintings at a riverside restaurant near Paris when they were forced, in their treatment of light and colour reflected in the water and over the figures, to break up the paint texture in sketchy touches and use brighter hues.

Renoir participated in the 1876 exhibition of the Impressionists with a series of canvases in which the light playing over the bright clothes of the figures is the main feature. Even the shadows in these paintings are full of colour, and the painting as a whole becomes a shimmering and quivering surface.

Throughout his Impressionist period that is from 1872-1883, Renoir practised a variety of techniques, putting on his colour now in thick, squashing strokes, now in thin layers, now in distinct, separate touches, now in smooth strokes that melted into one another.

It was not unusual for Renoir to switch from one technique to another in the same picture as in The Path Winding up through Tall Grass. Only the grass in the foreground is painted in thick, vigorous comma-like brush strokes, while the middle distance and the background glide away in thin, flat patches of colours merging into one another.

In his compositions of 1875 and 1876 he comes to use the human figure in a very original fashion, like a subject that is part of a landscape, on which light may play with greater richness and fantasy. In a sort of bluish half darkness, the light appears in the form of large round patches, a little pink, placed indifferently on faces and clothing and creating a phantasmagoria of colours, particularly on charming dresses with their bustles ornamented with stripes and ribbons. In this spirit he produces The Swing and the great composition of the Moulin de la Galette, one of the finest, most smiling of his masterpieces. It is like a marvellous tissue of interwoven sunlight and soft hazy blue. In foregoing the small separate touches he used for so many landscapes and open-air scenes at this period, he painted with criss-crossing brush strokes, laid on in thin, successive layers and melting into one another, which repeated form and volume, while at the same time rendering the luminous atmosphere bathing the figures.

The Portrait of Jeanne Samary may well be the most impressionist of Renoir's portraits. With no hint of shadows or darkness anywhere, with little or no variation in values, the whole canvas is a quilt of tiny quivering touches alive with light and a gemlike sparkle. The sitter in this work was Jeanne Samary, an actress at the Comedie Francaise who had the natural charm and beauty that Renoir required in his models, as well as a luminous complexion so that, in the artist's words «she seemed to radiate a light from within».

Outings in the country and boating on the river were themes that never failed to inspire the Impressionist painters. After the pleasure garden of the Moulin de la Galette, Renoir painted here the sunny animated atmosphere of a riverside restaurant on the Seine, just outside of Paris. Now he tried his hand at special effects of light filtering through an awning, and superbly evoked the beauty of a summer day out of doors. Nor did he ever succeed better than here in individualising his figures, recording their every movement and attitude. Luncheon of the Boating Party is certainly one of Renoir's finest canvases. There are however several passages that may strike us as being a trifle dry. The light, on the other hand, is beyond all praise, playing beautifully over the young woman holding a puppy in the left foreground – none other than Aline Charigot soon to become Renoir's wife – and the still life on the table, the leftovers of the picnic lunch. The girl in the centre, lolling on the railing, outlined against the landscape is again Renoir at his best. But we get a dissonant note in the lower right hand corner of the canvas, particularly in the man straddling the chair, with his hat rakishly back, who is handled more dryly than the rest, and seen in a harsher light.

Later on in his career, Renoir abandoned the Impressionist technique of painting with sketchy touches of thick paint, and defined his forms with layers of thin, transparent glazes that gave his tones a deep inner glow rather than a surface sparkle.