Doll News Winter 2018 - 65

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

T

he very name evokes visions of women,
children and men arrayed in fine fashion
strolling in parks, dancing, sewing,
playing the piano, attending the theater, enjoying a
boat ride, rolling hoops, encountering a rain shower.
Born into a working class family in Limoges,
France in 1841, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, at the age of
thirteen, worked as a painter in one of the porcelain
factories in this town famous for its fine china.
In 1862 Renoir and three young men-Claude
Monet, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille-became
friends while studying artistic techniques under
Charles Glyre, a Swiss-born artist living in France.
The four friends developed a strong interest in
painting landscapes as well as everyday modern life.
Taking their pallets and their easels outdoors-
en plein air-they captured the beauty of nature
beneath the diffused light of their large white
umbrellas. Using thin, visible brush strokes, they
perfected their depiction of the ever-changing
quality of light, recording what they saw in unique
angles using vivid colors.
Between 1874 and 1886 these young artists, along
with other like-minded painters including Edgar
Degas, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne and Camille
Pissarro, mounted eight exhibitions, bringing their
names to prominence in France and beyond.

The Impressionists

They were labeled "Impressionists" by French
art critic Louis Leroy who mockingly reviewed their
first major exhibition in 1874, by seizing upon the
title of Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise.
Leroy proclaimed the visionaries' works as "nothing
but impressions"-painted as if the artists had
captured a "first look"-a quick, first impression.
Although Renoir continued to practice painting
en plein air, he held a particular interest in people
engaged in their daily activities-and in their
attire-so he began to paint these individuals
going about their days, sometimes applying paint
to his canvases with a palette knife rather than
a brush. He also painted a significant number of
commissioned portraits.

Renoir's Portraits

In 2012 the Frick Collection in New York City
presented an exhibit of nine Impressionist paintings
by Renoir. Renoir: Impressionism and Full-Length
Painting was the first comprehensive study of the
artist's large-scale, full-length compositions. The
National Gallery of London loaned Renoir's The
Umbrellas (French: Les Parapluies) from its collection
to this special exhibit-the first time the painting
had been on view in the United States since 1886.
The Umbrellas is distinctive because Renoir
applied Impressionist as well as Post-Impressionist
techniques. He began painting The Umbrellas around
1880 using the loose brushwork and light palette he
had been using for years; however, around 1886 he
began to move away from Impressionism and into
what became known as the Post-Impressionist style.
He re-worked parts of The Umbrellas using more
geometric shapes and darker colors.
If one looks closely at the painting, the left side is
sharper (circa 1886), the right softer (circa 1880). The
little girl holding a hoop in the lower right corner of
the painting appears to be looking at the artist as he
paints the picture. She stands with perhaps her older
sister. The taller girl rests her left hand tenderly on
the younger girl's shoulder; her face turned away.
Fourteen years before the Frick Collection
presented Renoir's full-length portraits, the
Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas hosted
a major travelling exhibition organized by the
National Gallery of Canada called Renoir's Portraits:
Impressions of an Age.
The exhibition was promoted as "the first North
American exhibition ever devoted to the portraiture
of one of the world's most renowned artists. Of
all the Impressionists, only Pierre-Auguste Renoir
made his living as a professional portrait painter.
For more than 50 years Renoir explored the genre
of portraiture, experimenting and pressing forward
in his determination to become-as he explained to
Monet in 1884-'a painter of figures'."
While Renoir's The Umbrellas was not part of
the Fort Worth exhibition, a curious 42-inch papiermâché figure of a little girl drew considerable
interest. The figure, clad in a brown woolen coat
with wide cotton lace collar and cuffs, looked very
much like the little girl looking out from the lower
right corner of The Umbrellas.

Feature background: Renoir's Woman with a Parasol in a Garden circa 1875. Courtesy of: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
DOLL NEWS * UFDC.ORG

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