French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". 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. 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. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is 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 still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), 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. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au 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. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. 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, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made 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..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | In the Meadow | Ingenue | Coco Reading | Bather with Long Hair | Aline and Pierre |
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marcus larson
Simon Marcus Larson, född 5 januari 1825, Lilla Örsätter, Åtvidaberg, död 25 januari 1864 i London, var en svensk målare. Han tillhörde Dusseldorfskolan och skildrade naturens krafter på ett romantiskt och dramatiskt sätt. Larson hade en kort karriär och avled vid 39 års ålder, men ses ändå som en av Sveriges främsta 1800-talskonstnärer. 1856 var Larson i Dusseldorf och på julafton skissade han på ett solnedgångsmotiv vid den bohuslänska kusten, men Larson drömde om att måla en större tavla, hans atelje var alltför trång. Så en dag när han satt i stans populäraste caf?? och drack öl fick han id??n att han skulle måla i caf??lokalen. Sagt och gjort så hyrde han lokalen i 14 dagar. Duken han spände upp var 10-12 fot hög och 18 fot bred. Efter 10 dagar var tavlan klar. Tavlan ställdes ut på akademien och det byggdes en utsiktsramp för att åskådarna skulle få en överblick över tavlan, priset var 5 Silbergroschen per titt och det annonserades att intäkterna skulle gå till välgörande ändamål, vilket fick stort uppseende, särskilt bland övriga konstnärer, utställningen varade mellan 25 jan. och 15 feb. 1857 Tavlan ställdes också ut bland annat i Köln och Berlin sedan till Salon Carre i Paris där den hyllades. Därefter ställdes den också ut i Stockholm där Larson tänkte skänka tavlan till staten tillsammans med köpet av Vattenfall i Småland, men då Larson på hösten inte fick sälja nämnda tavla tog han ned den stora tavlan och tog den med sig när han lämnade Sverige och fortsatte sina resor, han visade den under några år, sista gången någon skrivit om tavlan var 1863, Efter Larsons död i London försvann tavlan.