P.E.’s Reviews > Renoir > Status Update

'By the modern period, the subject had becope detached from any moralizing sense of shame. Showing the nude in nature instead become an ideal of a harmonious naturalness that would be painted by many artists.'

' "There was a major shift in my work around 1883. I had taken Impressionism to the extreme and finally had to conclude that I was unable to paint and draw. I was at a dead end." '

[Le Bal du moulin de la Galette]

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'The joyful dancing at Montmartre shows a young society that can celebrate without stiff poses, a vibrant counter-image to the self-staging of the bourgeois elite attending evening performances at the Paris Opera.'

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The Studio in Batignolles (1870) by Henri Fantin-Latour depicts Édouard Manet at the easel in his studio [...] surrounded by friends and artists like Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Émile Zola.'

'Renoir's father could barely feed the seven children in the family, which led to his being placed as an apprentice to a porcelain painter when he was just 13 [...].
The crisis of the French porcelain industry led Renoir to turn to painting on canvas. By the middle of the 19th century, the mechanical application of pre-fabricated prints to porcelain had gradually replaced [cost-intensive painting porcelain by hand].'

'[...] art historian interest in the work of Renoir greatly diminished over the second half of the twentieth century. His paintings with their bright colors, genre-like themes, and harmonious compositions were accused of being merely decorative. Especially his later work, including lush female nudes in idealized landscapes, was mocked as "chocolate-box painting".'

'Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841–3 December 1919) is primarily considered a painter of happy moments. His ezrly masterpieces show mostly young people in a relaxed atmosphere on excursions in the area around Paris.'