Photo source: Wikimedia Commons, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a French painter best known for his contributions to impressionism. Wikipedia says,
"Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions." (Wikipedia: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 7.17.21 UTC 14:46)Art historian Robert L. Herbert said,
"In eighteenth-century art, Renoir found an echo of his convictions that man's natural proclivities were the source of art and of goodness. Once, he tells us in his writings, religion was a support for the imagination, but modern man, devoted to industry, engineering and the 'false mania of perfection' has cast God out. Like Ruskin, he believed that nature, not God, was now man's guide to spiritual and physical goodness..." (Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society)
The rest of this post is some quotes from Renoir.
Painting
"There is something in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is the essential. You come to Nature with yoru theories, and she knocks them all flat." (Quoted in Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art by Cairns, Huntington and Walker)
"The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts fort which sweeps you along in his passion." (Quoted in History of Impressionism by John Rewald)
"At this time when our French art, still at the beginning of this century so full of penetrating charm and exquisite fantasy, is perishing because of regularity, dryness and the mania of false perfection... we think it is useful to react promptly against the mortal doctrines which threaten to annihilate it..." (Quoted in Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society by Robert L. Herbert)
"I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting from every aspect. So I am staying in the sun - not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters." (Quoted in Renoir - His Life and Work by Francois Fosca)
