Editing Pierre-Auguste Renoir (section)

==Artworks==
[[File:Two Sisters (On the Terrace).jpg|thumb|left|''[[Two Sisters (On the Terrace)]]'', oil on canvas, 1881, [[Art Institute of Chicago]]]]
Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. However, in 1876, a reviewer in [[Le Figaro]] wrote "Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with those purplish green stains that denote a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse."<ref name="Figaro">{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/jun/16/art|title=La Parisienne, Renoir (1874)|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=16 June 2001 |access-date=29 April 2020}}</ref> Yet in characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of colour, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.

[[File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1880, Portrait of Mademoiselle Irène Cahen d'Anvers, Sammlung E.G. Bührle.jpg|thumb|''[[Portrait of Irène Cahen d'Anvers]]'' (''La Petite Irène''), 1880, [[Foundation E.G. Bührle]], Zürich<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.buehrle.ch/sammlung/artwork/detail/portraet-mademoiselle-irene-cahen-danvers-die-kleine-irene/|title=Porträt Mademoiselle Irène Cahen d'Anvers (Die kleine Irene) · Auguste Renoir · Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle|website=www.buehrle.ch}}</ref>]]

His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of [[Eugène Delacroix]] and the luminosity of [[Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot|Camille Corot]]. He also admired the realism of [[Gustave Courbet]] and [[Édouard Manet]], and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. Renoir admired [[Edgar Degas]]' sense of movement. Other painters Renoir greatly admired were the 18th-century masters [[François Boucher]] and [[Jean-Honoré Fragonard]].<ref>Rey, Robert: ''La Peinture française à la fin du XIXe siècle, la renaissance du sentiment classique : Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat'', Les Beaux-Arts, Van Oest, 1931 (thesis).</ref>

A fine example of Renoir's early work and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is ''[[Diana (Renoir painting)|Diana]]'', 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work; the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is a "student" piece, Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tréhot, the artist's mistress at that time, and inspiration for a number of paintings.<ref>[http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=46397+0+none "From the Tour: Mary Cassatt"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041111002529/http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=46397+0+none |date=11 November 2004 }}, August Renoir. Retrieved 7 March 2007.</ref>

In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water ''[[en plein air]]'' (outdoors), he and his friend [[Claude Monet]] discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them, an effect known today as [[diffuse reflection]]. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet worked side-by-side, depicting the same scenes (''La Grenouillère'', 1869).

One of the best-known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 ''Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette ([[Bal du moulin de la Galette]])''. The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people at a popular dance garden on the ''Butte Montmartre'' close to where he lived. The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling color and light.

[[File:Renoir Blond Bather.jpg|thumb|One of a [[Blonde Bather|series]], ''Blonde Bather'' (1881), marked a distinct change in style following a trip to Italy. The work is part of the permanent collection of the [[Clark Art Institute]].]]
By the mid-1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women. It was a trip to Italy in 1881 when he saw works by [[Raphael]], [[Leonardo da Vinci]], [[Titian]], and other [[Renaissance]] masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path. At that point he declared, "I had gone as far as I could with Impressionism and I realized I could neither paint nor draw".<ref>Ruggiero, Rocky, ''Renaissancing Renoir'', rockyruggiero.com Making Art and History Come To Life webinar, 19 April 2022</ref>

For the next several years he painted in a more severe style in an attempt to return to classicism.<ref>Clark, Kenneth: ''The Nude'', pages 154–61. Penguin, 1960.</ref> Concentrating on his drawing and emphasizing the outlines of figures, he painted works such as ''[[Blonde Bather]]'' (1881 and 1882) and ''The Large Bathers'' (1884–1887; [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]) during what is sometimes referred to as his "[[Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres|Ingres]] period".<ref>Asked late in life if he felt an affinity to Ingres, he responded: "I should very much like to", Rey, quoted in Wadley, page 336.</ref>

[[File:Auguste Renoir - Young Girls at the Piano - Google Art Project.jpg|left|thumb|''[[Girls at the Piano]]'', 1892, [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris]]
After 1890 he changed direction again. To dissolve outlines, as in his earlier work, he returned to thinly brushed color.

From this period onward he concentrated on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are ''[[Girls at the Piano]]'', 1892, and ''[[Les Grandes Baigneuses (Renoir)|Grandes Baigneuses]]'', 1887. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes.<ref>"For me, Renoir becomes a really great artist in the late nudes, above all in ''Les Grandes Baigneuses''". David Sylvester, quoted by Wadley, page 378</ref>

A prolific artist, he created several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his works—181 paintings in all—is at the [[Barnes Foundation]], in [[Philadelphia]].

===Catalogue raisonné===
A five-volume ''[[catalogue raisonné]]'' of Renoir's works (with one supplement) was published by [[Bernheim-Jeune]] between 1983 and 2014.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bernheim-jeune.com/renoir-en/|title=Bernheim-Jeune|access-date=13 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150713214904/http://www.bernheim-jeune.com/renoir-en/|archive-date=13 July 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> Bernheim-Jeune is the only surviving major art dealer that was used by Renoir. The [[Wildenstein Institute]] is preparing, but has not yet published, a critical catalogue of Renoir's work.<ref>[http://www.wildenstein-institute.fr/spip.php?page=wildenstein-notice&id_article=73&lang=en Wildenstein Institute] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150713183551/http://www.wildenstein-institute.fr/spip.php?page=wildenstein-notice&id_article=73&lang=en |date=13 July 2015 }}</ref> A disagreement between these two organizations concerning an unsigned work in [[Picton Castle]] was at the centre of the second episode of the fourth season of the television series ''[[Fake or Fortune]]''.

===Posthumous prints===
In 1919, [[Ambroise Vollard]], a renowned art dealer, published a book on the life and work of Renoir, ''La Vie et l'Œuvre de Pierre-Auguste Renoir'', in an edition of 1000 copies. In 1986, Vollard's heirs started reprinting the copper plates, generally, [[etching]]s with hand applied [[Watercolor painting|watercolor]]. These prints are signed by Renoir in the plate and are embossed "Vollard" in the lower margin. They are not numbered, dated or signed in pencil.

===Posthumous sales===
A small version of ''[[Bal du moulin de la Galette#Smaller version|Bal du moulin de la Galette]]'' sold for $78.1&nbsp;million 17 May 1990 at Sotheby's New York.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-18-mn-183-story.html|title=Renoir Work Sells for $78.1 Million : Auction: The painting 'Au Moulin de la Galette' is highlight of Sotheby's offering of Impressionist and modern art. The price is the second highest ever.|first=Times Wire|last=Services|date=18 May 1990|via=LA Times}}</ref>

In 2012, Renoir's ''[[Paysage Bords de Seine]]'' was offered for sale at auction but the painting was discovered to have been stolen from the [[Baltimore Museum of Art]] in 1951. The sale was cancelled.<!-- File:CathedralRouen.JPG -->