Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille au chapeau, 1895

Portraits of children were amongst Renoir's favourite themes and feature strongly in the artist's painting of the 1890s.

Over the previous decade Renoir had been commissioned to paint the children of a number of celebrated patrons, including the Lerolles and the Berards.

These commissions gave the artist a renewed interest in portraiture in the 1890s and Renoir painted a number of non-commissioned portraits in addition to more formal requests.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Rocks of L’Estaque, 1882 *****

This is one of a small series of radiant landscapes that the Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted during a stay with Paul Cézanne in L'Estaque, a small fishing port just west of Marseilles.

Renoir, who was travelling back to Paris having spent the previous months in Algeria and Italy, was immediately captivated by the raw light and rich beauty of the Provençal landscape.

"How beautiful it is!" he wrote to a friend, "It's certainly the most beautiful place in the world, and not yet inhabited… There are only some fishermen and the mountains…so there are no walls, no properties or few…here I have the true countryside at my doorstep".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Pan’s Party, 1879

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this florid allegorical canvas, La fête de Pan, in the summer of 1879.

Commissioned to adorn the drawing room of the Bérard family’s country home, the Château de Wargemont, La fête de Pan depicts a spring festival devoted to the ancient Greek god, Pan - a rare example of a mythological subject in Renoir’s oeuvre.

This jubilant painting combines the artist’s careful observations of nature en plein air with his imaginative fantasies of beauty, both feminine and floral.

Renoir | Two Vases of Chrysanthemums, 1884

• "If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself".


• "Se dipingi una foglia su un albero senza usare un modello, la tua immaginazione potrà' fornirti solo alcuni tipi di foglie; ma la natura ti offre milioni di foglie, tutte sullo stesso albero. Non ci sono due foglie esattamente uguali. L'artista che dipinge solo ciò che nella sua mente molto presto ripeterà se stesso".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir🎨

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | La partie de croquet, 1895

"Towards 1883 there was a kind of rupture in my work. I had come to the end of Impressionism and reached the conclusion that I could neither paint nor draw. In a word, I had reached a dead end…”. (Renoir to Vollard, cit. after H. Grabers, p. 235f.)

In the early 1880s, Renoir fell into a crisis, which led him disengage himself from his Impressionist style. Thereupon he travelled to Italy, where he studied closely the painters of the Renaissance, especially Raphael.

Enthused by their techniques, he began to introduce new pictorial elements into his works. He moved closer to the classical style and again set great store by the human form and most especially a finely detailed painting style - which is easily recognised in “Le Grand Baigneuses” of 1884.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Confidence, 1897

From Christie's auction house | - This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue critique of Pierre-Auguste Renoir🎨 being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.

Painted in 1897, Confidence captures a couple in a private moment of conversation, the woman's lips slightly parted as she leans in to speak, the man's head lowered in a posture of concentration.

The intimacy of the scene is emphasized by the extremely close vantage point, with both heads abruptly cropped by the edges of the canvas. Renoir's focus is on the figures' overlapping profiles, which interlock like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The dialogue between their forms is heightened by the light that enters from the direction of the viewer, reflecting off the side of the man's face while casting the woman's features into shadow. At the same time, the scene is unified by the warm, restrained palette of cream, russet, and dark brown.

Renoir | Still Life with roses

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Les Grands Boulevards, 1875

Philadelphia Museum of Art | Perhaps Renoir's most famous view of Paris is this archetypal image of its newest and most fashionable district in the 1870s.

The Grands Boulevards is full of the pigment daubs and bright colors that are characteristic of Impressionism.

The modern life in the city is transmitted through visible strokes of paint, which operate as immediate sensory cues that allow the viewer to perceive this world as though it is passing by. This is the magic of Renoir's Paris.

The world of the painting is truly historical -the modern city emerging- even though his translation of this place is a subjective and fleeting impression.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Onions, 1881

Renoir painted this casual arrangement of onions and garlic piled on crumpled cloth during a visit to Naples in 1881.
Clear light and fluid brushstrokes define the onions’ round, solid forms and capture the shiny, papery quality of their skins.
Sterling Clark often stated that this was his favorite of the many paintings by Renoir in his collection. | © The Clark Art Institute

Renoir | Bouquet of Chrysanthemums, 1881

Renoir felt that he had greater freedom to experiment in still lifes than in figure paintings.

"When I paint flowers, I feel free to try out tones and values and worry less about destroying the canvas", he told the writer Georges Rivière.

"I would not do this with a figure painting since there I would care about destroying the work". | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Renoir | Roses from Wargemont, 1885

Title: Roses from Wargemont
Author: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist painter, 1841-1919)
Date: 1885
Style: Impressionism⏭
Period: Rejection of Impressionism;
Genre: flower painting
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Private Collection

Renoir | La Promenade, 1875-1876

A young woman shepherds a pair of identically dressed little sisters along the path of a well-maintained public park. All three figures are outfitted for the cold and in the height of fashion. The eldest wears a blue velvet jacket with wide sleeves trimmed with red fox; the little girls wear miniature blue-green jackets trimmed with either swansdown or white mink.
Further up the pathway to the right, Renoir ⎆ has included no fewer than eleven additional figures and two playful dogs.

Renoir | L'église à essoyes, 1890

Renoir | Woman in an Armchair, 1874

Renoir | Figures on the Beach, 1890

Probably painted in 1890 on the Cote d’Azur in southern France, this sun-filled painting shows two female figures at the beach.

The seated figure is shown in profile, her right hand holding a parasol on the sand. She exchanges a look with the standing figure to her right who holds a basket at her side.

The women are joined by a small white dog, and before the water stands a young boy dressed in blue, seemingly throwing an object into the ocean.

Renoir | Girls in Black, 1882

Renoir | Young girls looking at an album, 1892

Renoir | La Grenouillère, 1869

La Grenouillère, the frog pond was a popular venue for outings from Paris and for bathing in the summer, situated outside Bougival to the west of the capital. The sun is filtered through the green leaves and it sparkles on the surface of the river Seine. People are bathing. Some are in boats, rowing or sailing on the river. A group of men in suits and women wearing crinolines have sought shade beneath a tree on the little artificial island known as Camembert or the flowerpot.

Renoir | After the Luncheon, 1879

Renoir | At the Cafe, 1877