Oarsmen at Chatou

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (born February 25, 1841, Limoges, France—died December 3, 1919, Cagnes), French painter originally associated with the Impressionist movement. His early works 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.

Renoir was born into a family of artisans. His father, a tailor who had seven children, moved with his family to Paris about 1845. Renoir demonstrated his gift at an early age. Quickly recognizing his talent, his parents apprenticed him, at age 13, to work in a porcelain factory, where he learned to decorate plates with bouquets of flowers. Shortly after that, he was painting fans and then cloth panels representing religious themes for missionaries to hang in their churches. His skill and the great pleasure he took in his work soon convinced him he should study painting in earnest. Having saved a little money, he decided, in 1862, to take evening courses in drawing and anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts as well as painting lessons at the studio of Charles Gleyre, a Swiss painter who had been a student of the 19th-century Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres. Although the academic style of his teacher did not suit Renoir, he nevertheless accepted its discipline in order to acquire the elementary skills needed to become a painter.