Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Masterpiece Curations

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir, was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. Learn more about this master artist!

“The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.” ~Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (known as Auguste) (pronunciation) was born in Limoges, France, in 1841. At the age of three, his family moved to Paris in search of a better life. When he was a kid, Auguste was already good at drawing. But he was actually better at singing, and so took music lessons from a man named Charles Gounod, who was the choir master at the Church of St Roch. Sadly, due to his family struggling finances, Renoir had to quit both school and his music lessons when he was thirteen so that he could go work at a porcelain factory.

Renoir was good at his job, but when he wasn’t working, he would escape to the Louvre and spend time browsing the galleries. When the owner of the factory saw that he had a natural talent for art, he told Auguste’s family, and the young man was able to start taking art lessons in the hopes of entering the art school, Ecole des Beaux Arts.

In 1862, Renoir was able to continue his art studies and was taught by Charles Gleyre, though he was so poor that sometimes he couldn’t even afford to buy paint. During that time, he became friends with other artists, such as Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet.

Renoir began to feature some of his paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, but it wasn’t until 1868, when he displayed the painting Lise with a Parasol that he achieved his first real success. Still, his work wasn’t always accepted by the Salon, and after he received several rejections, Renoir and several other artist (including Monet, Sisley, and Camille Pissarro) banded together to host their own exhibition for Impressionists. He displayed six of his own paintings, and though the exhibition itself wasn’t very successful, his paintings were well received.

During the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, Auguste mostly presented portraits, hoping to get commissions in order to earn a livelihood. At the third exhibition the following year, he presented a more varied range of paintings, including Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and The Swing. After that, Renoir returned to displaying his art at the Salon, and by 1880, had become successful in his career as a painter.

For the next several years, he traveled throughout Europe, to places like Spain, Italy, and the British Isles, in order to study the old masters and paint landscapes. And in 1890, he married a dressmaker named Aline Victorine Charigot, who modeled for him in many of his paintings, and with whom he had three sons: Pierre, Jean, and Claude.

In 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis, which made it more difficult for him to paint. However, he didn’t let that stop him, and though he was forced to change his technique, he continued to paint for the rest of his life, until his death in 1919. Pierre-Auguste Renoir is remembered as the Impressionist painter who celebrated life and beauty by capturing them on canvas.