Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919) was a French painter originally associated with the Impressionist movement.His Rubenesque paintings display his eye for elegance and beauty which resulted in his prominence within the Impressionist movement.Renoir is most appreciated for his artworks that depict the leisurely lifestyle of contemporary Paris in the last 30 years of the 19th century as well as his Rubenesque nudes.His paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions.Though celebrated as a colorist with a keen eye for capturing the movement of light and shadow, Renoir started to explore Renaissance painting in the middle of his career, which led him to integrate more line and composition into his mature works and create some of his era’s most timeless canvases.The female nude was one of his primary subjects. Yet in characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.Renoir was the first Impressionist to understand the potential limitations of an art based primarily on optical sensation and light effects.

Though his discoveries in this field would always remain integral to his art, he reasserted the necessity of composition and underlying structure in modern painting, achieving in his mature work a structured, monumental style that acknowledged the strengths of High Renaissance art.

More of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s amazing paintings can be found at https://www.renoir.net/ and https://www.theartstory.org/artist/renoir-pierre-auguste/.