Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A painter of French Impressionism. He painted bright scenes of people gathering, and women and children with soft skin, in warm colors. In Japan his works are held by the National Museum of Western Art, the Artizon Museum, the Pola Museum of Art, and others.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1841 in Limoges in central France and moved to Paris with his family as a small child. After working as a porcelain painter in his teens, he decided to become an artist. At Gleyre's studio he met Monet and Sisley, and together they pursued the painting of outdoor light.
In the 1870s he stood at the center of Impressionism, painting cheerful scenes of Parisian life such as "Bal du moulin de la Galette," where people dance in dappled sunlight. He was also close to the family of the publisher Charpentier and painted portraits of Madame Charpentier and her daughters. "Mademoiselle Georgette Charpentier Seated" (1876) at the Artizon Museum is one of these. After a trip to Italy in the 1880s he experimented with a manner with clearer outlines, and eventually turned to richly colored nudes. He also exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
In his last years, suffering from rheumatism, he kept working at Cagnes in the south of France and died in 1919. As for his ties to Japan, the Western-style painter Umehara Ryuzaburo is known to have visited Renoir while in France and received his instruction. "Parisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem" (1872) at the National Museum of Western Art is part of the Matsukata Collection, bought by the businessman Matsukata Kojiro in 1921.
