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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Born: Limoges, 25 February 1841
Died: Cagnes-sur-Mer, 3 December 1919
Nationality: French

Background:

Working class: son of a tailor and a dressmaker

Studies:

Apprenticed to porcelain painter M. Levy

With Charles Gleyre at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1862-64, Paris)

Copies Old Master paintings in Louvre

Career:

1844 – moves with family to Paris

1862 – meets Claude Monet and Frédéric Bazille in Gleyre’s studio

1864 – first Paris Salon exhibition; Renoir exhibit there regularly

1867 – Salon rejects entries of Renoir, Monet, and Bazille

1870-71 – Serves in cavalry regiment during Franco-Prussian War

1873 – Salon rejects Riding in the Bois de Boulogne (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

1874 – participates in First Impressionist Exhibition (also Second-1876 and Third-1877)

1878 – Renoir ceases exhibiting with the Impressionists for financial reasons and resumes exhibiting at the Salon

1879 – exhibits Mme Charpentier and her Children at Salon

1883 – solo exhibition at Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery

1890s – Renoir moves about France (Provence, Essoyes, Brittany, Normandy); begins producing etchings and lithographs

1900 – awarded Légion d’honneur

Travels

Italy (1881-82); North Africa (1881-22); Jersey and Guernsey (1883)

Commissions from:

Paul Berard; Paul Durand-Ruel; Georges Charpentier; Maurice Gangnat; Prince de Wagram; Ambroise Vollard

Important Artworks:

Inn of Mother Anthony, 1866 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)

La Grenouillère, 1869 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)

La Loge, 1874 (Courtauld Institute, London)

Mme Charpentier and Her Children, 1878 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81 ( Phillips Collection, Washington, DC)

Frédéric Bazille painted Renoir’s portrait in 1867 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)