Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Life

Style & Innovation

Within the Impressionist group, Renoir was the painter who never gave up the human figure. Where Monet chased light itself and the landscape, Renoir painted how that light trembled on a person's skin, on fabric, in the air of a dance hall. His innovation lay in drawing the dappled light of the outdoors onto the figure so that skin glowed with a pearly sheen, and in refusing to use black as the color of shadow — painting shade instead in cool complementary tones (blues, rose-pinks, soft violets) so that the flesh seems to radiate from within. 'Dance at the Moulin de la Galette' (1876) and 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1880–81) are declarations that filled the canvas with the leisure and happiness of the modern city dweller, and they became the very source of the popular notion that 'Impressionism means pleasure.' In this exhibition's seven-section narrative, Renoir is placed, after Courbet's Realism (Section 1), at the heart of 'Impressionism' (Section 2) alongside Monet, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley — as the painter who translated the liberation of light into the human face and body. Indeed, the guiding image of this touring exhibition is Renoir's very own 'Woman in an Armchair' (1874), so much so that he is the face of the Impressionist section. But Renoir's true originality lies in the fact that he never settled into Impressionism. After his trip to Italy in 1881–82, he returned to the solid draftsmanship of Raphael and Ingres (the dry period, roughly 1883–87). In his final years he loosened the line once more and moved toward warm, ruddy, full-bodied nudes as soft as velvet — and the work in this exhibition, 'Seated Bather' (c. 1903–06), is the very essence of those late nudes. Within a single painter are contained three transformations — Impressionism, a return to the classical, and the late nudes — so that the exhibition's title, 'Beyond Impressionism,' is distilled into the life of Renoir alone.

Technique

The first thing to notice before a canvas by Renoir is that 'the kind of brushwork changes from area to area.' For skin he uses feathery touches rubbed so softly that the brushstrokes nearly vanish, along with a wet-in-wet technique of laying wet paint over wet paint, creating smooth, outline-free surfaces; for hair, the sheen of a forehead, and background foliage he uses short, thick impasto strokes. Just as he had learned as a porcelain painter, he laid down a white or light-colored ground and built up thin, transparent layers of color over it, so that the light of the ground passed through the paint layers and shone back — this is the secret of his distinctive 'pearl-toned skin that glows from within.' Look closely at the flesh and you will find an astonishing range of colors mixed in, from peach, yellow, and pink to blue-gray and violet, and the shade is rendered not in black but in cool complements, so that even the shadows are alive with color. From a conservation-science standpoint, X-ray and infrared examination of Renoir's works often reveals a working sequence in which he established the proportions with a faint charcoal underdrawing, then laid a warm ochre underpaint over it to build a 'luminous foundation'; such studies can also show pentimenti where a figure's pose or contour was revised, as well as deformations in the canvas weave and tacking edges (the detailed findings for each of the two works shown here can be found in the DIA conservation department's records). In front of the actual works, compare (1) the surface contrast in a late figure painting such as 'The White Pierrot,' where the skin is smooth and the costume and background are rough, with (2) the velvet-thick, ruddy surface texture of a late nude such as 'Seated Bather.' Because of the smoothness of his color layers, Renoir's craquelure tends to be relatively fine and evenly netted, and when the light catches it from the side, the differences in the thickness of the paint layers and a subdued sheen come into view. The 'contrast' where smooth skin meets rough background brushwork within a single canvas is the key to seeing Renoir.

Key Works

Behind the Canvas

Connections

Renoir built Impressionism together with Monet, Sisley, and Bazille, whom he met in Gleyre's studio (in this exhibition's Section 2 he stands alongside Monet, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley). But after being captivated in Italy in 1881–82 by the classical draftsmanship of Raphael and Ingres, he went through a 'crisis of Impressionism' and took a path that also connects with the 'return to structure' chosen by Cézanne in Section 3 — Cézanne and Renoir were in fact friends who even worked together in the 1880s. Renoir's warm color and his focus on the figure left their traces, in later years, on Matisse's liberation of color (Section 5) and on the early figure paintings of Picasso (Section 6). Within the same exhibition's flow from Courbet's solid Realism (Section 1) → Renoir's light (Section 2) → Cézanne's structure (Section 3), the life of Renoir alone (Impressionism → return to the classical → late nudes) reads like a miniature of the entire exhibition. And through his son Jean Renoir, the model for 'The White Pierrot,' two arts — painting and film — are carried on within a single family.

Did You Know