Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille au chapeau, 1895

Portraits of children were amongst Renoir's favourite themes and feature strongly in the artist's painting of the 1890s.

Over the previous decade Renoir had been commissioned to paint the children of a number of celebrated patrons, including the Lerolles and the Berards.

These commissions gave the artist a renewed interest in portraiture in the 1890s and Renoir painted a number of non-commissioned portraits in addition to more formal requests.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille au chapeau, 1895 | Christie's

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Young Girl with Hat, 1893

Pierre-Auguste Renoir loved to paint his models wearing hats and bonnets.

"He put heaps of them on my head", one model reported.

"He took me to the milliners' shops; he never ceased buying lots of hats".

Renoir painted these accessories continually, even after his dealer, Durand-Ruel, advised him that hats were going out of fashion and that his works might sell better if he didn't include them.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Young Girl with Hat / Jeune fille au chapeau, 1893 (detail) | Barnes Foundation

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Rocks of L’Estaque, 1882

This is one of a small series of radiant landscapes that the Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted during a stay with Paul Cézanne in L'Estaque, a small fishing port just west of Marseilles.

Renoir, who was travelling back to Paris having spent the previous months in Algeria and Italy, was immediately captivated by the raw light and rich beauty of the Provençal landscape.

"How beautiful it is!" he wrote to a friend, "It's certainly the most beautiful place in the world, and not yet inhabited… There are only some fishermen and the mountains…so there are no walls, no properties or few…here I have the true countryside at my doorstep".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tamaris, France, 1885

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tamaris, France, 1885 | Minneapolis Institute of Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted Tamaris, France in 1885.

This art piece is located in Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, USA.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the Clark Art Institute

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Bouquet of Roses, 1879

In the summer of 1879, the banker and diplomat Paul Berard invited Pierre-Auguste Renoir to his country house in Normandy.

During his visit, the artist painted portraits of Berard’s children and made several panel decorations, this one for a door in the library.

While the bouquet’s orderly arrangement is traditional, the thick brushstrokes and lively colors reflect Renoir’s Impressionist technique. | Source: © The Clark Art Institute

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Bouquet of Roses, 1879 | The Clark Art Institute

Nell'estate del 1879, il banchiere e diplomatico Paul Berard invitò Renoir nella sua casa di campagna in Normandia.

Durante la sua visita, l'artista dipinse ritratti dei figli di Berard e realizzò diverse decorazioni su tavola, questa per una porta della biblioteca.

Mentre la disposizione ordinata del bouquet è tradizionale, le spesse pennellate ed i colori vivaci riflettono la tecnica impressionista di Renoir. | Fonte: © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the Museum Barberini

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Pear Tree, 1877

In the early 1860s Pierre-Auguste Renoir had studied in the Paris atelier of Swiss history painter Charles Gleyre.

Together with his fellow pupils Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, he belonged to the nucleus of the group that would become known as Impressionists in the mid-1870s.

Renoir’s early experiments with painting in the open air were decisive for the development of his visual language. In a departure from traditional methods, he worked en plein air not merely for studies, but also, like Monet, in order to create independent, finished works.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Champ de bananiers, 1881

Starting in 1881 the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel regularly bought paintings from Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The painter then undertook all the trips he had previously been unable to afford and which would complete his artistic training.

His first trip took him to Algeria, in the footsteps of Delacroix whom he admired. Renoir's visual experience there was as intense as it had been for the older artist.

Seduced by the colours and the "incredible wealth" of nature here, he produced several pure landscapes, quite rare in his oeuvre. This field of banana trees is in the Essai garden in Hamma, created in 1832 in Algiers.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Terrace at Cagnes, 1905

Suffering from severe rheumatism late in life, Renoir often visited Cagnes, a town in southern France. He rented an apartment in the Maison de La Poste (post office building) and lived there from 1903 to 1907.

We see that building on the right side of this painting. Renoir could view the streets of Cagnes and its orchards from a window in his apartment.

This painting presents, in limpid brushwork, the houses and orchards arranged stepwise on the hill.

The woman seated on the wall is wearing a white hat and a red jacket.

Beside her is a child in a straw hat. | Source: © Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Terrace at Cagnes, 1905 | Bridgestone Museum of Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Lise - La femme a l'ombrelle, 1867

Lise, also known as Lise - La femme à l'ombrelle, or Lise with a Parasol, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1867 during his early Salon period.

The full-length painting depicts model Lise Tréhot posing in a forest.

She wears a white muslin dress and holds a black lace parasol to shade her from the sunlight, which filters down through the leaves, contrasting her face in the shadow and her body in the light, highlighting her dress rather than her face.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Paysage du Midi, 1905

An exquisite example of Renoir’s mature landscapes, Paysage du Midi depicts the sun-drenched terrain of the South of France to superb effect.

Within the present work, a woman adorned in summery white stands amidst a cluster of leafy trees, whilst the vibrant blue sea can be glimpsed in the background.

Renoir adored the South of France, and spent an increasing amount of time there before moving permanently to the area in 1902.

Having suffered from the effects of rheumatoid arthritis prior to his move to the south, Renoir found the warmth and sunlight of this more benign climate beneficial to his health, and produced some of the most charming and attractive landscapes of his entire career from the mid-1890s onwards.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the Christie's

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Renoir | Figures on the Beach, 1890

Figures on the Beach
Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)
Date: 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 3/4 x 25 1/4 in. (52.7 x 64.1 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number:  1975.1.198
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 961

Pierre Auguste Renoir | Woman playing a guitar, 1897

Woman Playing a Guitar / "Femme jouant de la guitare"/"Joueuse de guitare ou La Guitariste" is an 1897 painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, which bought it in 1901.

The work was one of the first paintings acquired by Paul Durand-Ruel.

Renoir painted several paintings of guitar-players and borrowing classical motifs - here, he is influenced by Camille Corot, Titian and Rubens.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Église à Essoyes, 1890

The great impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir🎨 lived in the charming little village of Essoyes, in the Aube department of Champagne-Ardennes (in north-central France) from 1896-1907.

The village, hometown of his wife Aline and model and governess of his children Gabrielle Renard, is represented in many of his paintings.

Renoir | Landscapes with Figures

"If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree.

No two leaves are exactly the same.

The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself"

- Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Seascape, 1879

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919)

Title: Seascape

Origin: France

Date: 1879

Medium: Oil on canvas

Inscriptions: Inscribed lower right: Renoir'79

Dimensions: 72.6 × 91.6 cm (28 1/2 × 36 in.)

Credit Line: The Art Institute of Chicago, Potter Palmer Collection

Reference Number: 1922.438

Renoir | Reading Woman on the Bench, 1905

• "Resto al sole non tanto per eseguire dei ritratti in piena luce, ma per scaldarmi e per osservare. Così, a forza di vedere l'esterno, ho finito con l'accorgermi solo delle grandi armonie senza più preoccuparmi dei piccoli dettagli che spengono il sole anziché infiammarlo".
• "So I am staying in the sun - not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters [...] So, by looking around outside, I have finished by seeing only the broad harmonies, and am no longer preoccupied with the little details, which only extinguish the sunlight, instead of increasing its brilliance".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'ombrelle, 1878

In this radiant painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicts the quintessential Impressionist subject of the fashionably attired Parisienne within a scene of abundantly flowering nature.

Painted in 1878 at the height of Impressionism, the variegated brushwork consisting of thick and swirling impasto and small dabs of spontaneous and audaciously applied paint, make L'ombrelle one of the artist's most experimental works of the latter part of that decade.

Renoir | Port de Marseille, le Fort Saint-Jean, 1906

In the early 1880s Pierre-Auguste Renoir made his first forays abroad; he had previously traveled no further from Paris than Normandy. The years of 1881-1884 however saw Renoir in a variety of disparate locations including Algeria, Italy and the French Riviera.

It was on these journeys that he stepped away from rendering purely figure-based compositions, rather creating an interesting series of landscapes to record his new surroundings.

There is no doubt that these travels deeply affected Renoir and his art, and indeed he would return repeatedly to the South of France, eventually choosing to settle permanently in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the early 1900s.

Renoir | Enfants dans le jardin de Montmartre, 1895

"Towards 1883 there was a kind of rupture in my work. I had come to the end of Impressionism and reached the conclusion that I could neither paint nor draw. In a word, I had reached a dead end…”. (Renoir to Vollard, cit. after H. Grabers, p. 235f.)

In the early 1880s, Renoir fell into a crisis, which led him disengage himself from his Impressionist style. Thereupon he travelled to Italy, where he studied closely the painters of the Renaissance, especially Raphael.

Enthused by their techniques, he began to introduce new pictorial elements into his works. He moved closer to the classical style and again set great store by the human form and most especially a finely detailed painting style - which is easily recognised in “Le Grand Baigneuses” of 1884.