In the mid 1870s, the first exhibition was held for the new impressionist painters and Renoir gained his first great acclaim. While living and working in Montmartre, he would have an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon who would become one of the leading female artists of the day. He would later marry Aline Victorine Charigot, with whom he would have three sons, one of which, Jean Renoir, would become an important filmmaker.
After marriage, his work changed when he became very much family oriented and was equally as interested in painting individual or family portraits as he was in landscapes. One of the most famous impressionist works by any painter, is his 1876 Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette), an open-air scene, jammed with people, of a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre not far from where he had been living. In 1881 he travelled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, then to Madrid, Spain to see the work of Diego Velazquez and then to Italy to see Titian's masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome.
On January 15, 1882 Renoir met composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner's portrait in just 35 minutes.A prolific artist, over a 60 year period, Pierre-Auguste Renoir made several thousand paintings, continuing to paint even during the last 20 years of his life when he was severely hampered by arthritis and wheelchair-bound. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes," a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer not far from the Mediterranean coast. There, he continued to paint by using a brush strapped to his arm. He even created sculptures, dictating to an assistant who worked the clay. In 1919, Renoir had the extraordinary experience of visiting the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3, 1919. Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than US$70 million. Below is a photo of one that sold for US$78.1 million. |
