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 :. | Spring Bouquet | Madame Thurneysen and her Daughter | Mother Anthony's Inn at Marlotte | Little Girl in a White Apron | Idylle |
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Diego Rivera
Mexican Social Realist Muralist, 1886-1957,Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c. 1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of colour. He returned to Mexico in 1921, seeking to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929 ?C 57). From 1930 to 1934 he worked in the U.S. His mural for New York's Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Ilich Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rivera created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico's most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large-scale didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry, with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow spaces. Rivera was twice married to Frida Kahlo.
CAMPEN, Jacob van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1595-1657 Chief exponent of Classicism in The Netherlands. He studied architecture in Italy and was influenced by the work of Scamozzi and Palladio. With his Coymans House on the Keizersgracht, Amsterdam (1624), he introduced the Palladian style to The Netherlands. His most refined work is the Mauritshuis in The Hague (1633?C5), which has a Palladian plan, elevations featuring a Giant Order of Ionic pilasters set on a plain base, a pedimented central section given little emphasis, and a hipped roof. Much grander is the Town Hall (now Royal Palace), Amsterdam (1648?C55): it has two internal courtyards separated by a huge central hall, façades with two superimposed Giant Orders of pilasters, and a large projecting pedimented central section over which is a domed lantern. His Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), Haarlem (1645?C9), is based on the quincunx plan (essentially a Greek cross within a square), with square Ionic crossing-piers and a groin-vault over the crossing. He was responsible for the Accijnshuis, Amsterdam (1638), the Noordeinde Palace, The Hague (1640), and, with others, the decorations of Post's Huis-den-Bosch, Maarssen, near Utrecht (c.1628).
BERRUGUETE, Pedro
Spanish Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1450-1504 Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450 ?C 1504) was a Spanish painter, his art is regarded as a transitional style between gothic and renaissance. Born in Paredes de Nava, Spain, he went to Italy in 1480 and worked in Federigo da Montefeltro's court in Urbino. He came back Spain 1482 and painted in several cities as Sevilla, Toledo and Ávila. He was father of an important sculptor, Alonso Berruguete, considered the most important sculptor in Renaissance Spain.