Pierre-Auguste Renoir: The Pope of Painting


It was a rare event in the long history of the Louvre. In August of 1909, one special guest and his entourage were being allowed to visit the museum during the hours it was closed to the public. Rendered virtually immobile by rheumatoid arthritis and looking older than his 78 years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was as frail and gaunt as “a monk from the Italian Renaissance.” Barely 105 pounds in weight, his fingers curled into his palms, and his dry, taut skin had the appearance of leather. But his eyes sparkled with joy and excitement at the prospect of seeing one of his paintings — a portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier — added to the museum’s world-famous collection.

A homemade sedan chair — two long bamboo poles strapped to an ordinary, well-padded wicker chair — had been created to allow him the chance to enter the museum and tour its galleries as comfortably as possible. Two men grasped the poles between the chair and carried their easy burden through the entrance as the rest of the entourage followed. Almost as momentous as this rare, private showing was the fact that the Louvre was about to add a painting by an Impressionist to their collection of iconic masterpieces.

For decades the output of the Impressionist artists had been ridiculed by French art critics and spurned by French museum curators. Now one of the most famous and beloved of all of the Impressionists found himself being acclaimed as a master by the pinnacle of the French artistic establishment. The “cork in the stream of life” — as he liked to call himself — had made a long, colorful journey and had now landed safely on hallowed ground.

Beginnings
The cork began his journey on Feb. 25, 1841 in Limoges, France. There was nothing about his birth, childhood, or young adulthood to foreshadow the physical difficulties and discomfort he would experience in the last 20 years of his life. The sixth of seven children, young Auguste — as he was called — was destined for a comfortable, but unremarkable future. His father was a struggling tailor and his mother was a seamstress but both were determined that all of their children would be trained to work with their hands. Becoming a skilled craftsperson of some kind was the preferable option, for then the young Renoirs would have steady employment while creating beauty. To better the family income, in 1845 the Renoir family moved to Paris. Living close to the Louvre allowed young Auguste and his family to spend long Sunday afternoons strolling through its endless galleries of masterpieces. Back home in the family’s modest apartment, Auguste would use his father’s tailor’s chalk to draw pictures on the floor. Realizing that their son had a gift, his parents made the sacrifices necessary to give the boy art lessons as well as the standard basic education. Coming from the town of Limoges — the city that was synonymous with French porcelain — Auguste’s father had the hope of seeing his son become a successful china-painter.

1881's Luncheon of the Boating Party is considered by many to be Renoir's greatest masterpiece.
1881’s Luncheon of the Boating Party is considered by many to be Renoir’s greatest masterpiece.

By the time he was 13, Auguste was apprenticed to a major porcelain factory in Paris and quickly became an expert at hand-painting cupids, Venuses, and portraits of Marie Antoinette in the center of countless plates and soup bowls. Because of the love of beauty instilled in him by his family, young Renoir would return to the Louvre to study the masterpieces of 18th-century French Art. Paintings by Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher were reproduced on the company’s china, and hints of a mature Renoir were already evident in the teenager’s handiwork. Comfortable in this career, and given more freedom by his employer to try new designs and themes, young Renoir would have remained indefinitely at Levy Freres if not for the rise of industrialization and the possibility of endless portraits of Marie Antoinette being stamped out mechanically on plates and soup bowls. The growing middle class was not interested in hand-painted china if a less-expensive alternative could be mass-produced by machinery. Consequently, Renoir’s employers went bankrupt, and he was forced to find other uses for his talents.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival, 1883. Oil on canvas.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival, 1883. Oil on canvas.

Painting pastoral scenes on ladies’ fans, religious subjects on window shades (for missionaries to take to their parishioners as teaching tools), and re-creating popular themes on the walls of cafes gradually gave Renoir the urge to become a “workman painter” (his words) rather than “an artist.” So at the age of 19, he joined the art classes offered by Charles Gleyre, and there met Monet, Sisley and Bazille, the future founders of a new reality-based art movement that would be called Impressionism. By 1860, he was granted permission to paint in the Louvre and focused his attention on the artistic styles of the 18th-century French masters, as well as those of Delacroix and Rubens.

Renoir quickly became a member of the new generation of avant-garde artists, lampooned as Impressionists by the media, but who would call themselves the “Society of Irregulars.” Contrary to the establishment artists, these young revolutionaries actually took their canvases, easels, paints and brushes and painted outdoors, directly from nature. And instead of re-telling stories from classical mythology or the Bible, the new art would capture a moment in time in the lives of ordinary people. Renoir’s new style of realism would incorporate elements of Impressionism by capturing those moments. But being very much his own person, he would veer away from a focus on the play of light and color. Instead, he was more interested in the subject matter, usually people he knew, as the purpose of his paintings.

And it was his subject matter that would propel him toward success. His portraits of women and children, in particular, reflected the joy he felt about his work, nature, and life in general. And while the majority of French art collectors and gallery directors were slow to appreciate the work of the other Impressionists, Renoir’s subjects readily appealed to influential clients who would add his paintings to their collections. Eventually, in 1877, one of Renoir’s paintings would find acceptance with the Salon, the establishment’s arbiter of artistic taste, and Renoir’s career flourished.

“For me a picture has to be something pleasant, delightful, and pretty — yes, pretty. There are enough unpleasant things in the world without us producing even more,” he would say when anyone questioned his subject matter or technique.

Renoir’s life continued to flow smoothly and effortlessly through his adult years. Content with a simple life, the money he made from his early sales kept him cheerful and busy. He would eventually travel to Algeria, Spain and Italy, taking from those countries and their art treasures elements that he would use in his paintings — richness of colors and delight in subject matter. By 1890, he considered himself successful enough to marry Aline Charigot, his model for several years, and father three famous sons: Pierre (an actor and director), Jean (the legendary film director), and Claude (a film producer). Now an established family man, Renoir would fill his canvases with portraits of his wife and sons, as well as many prosperous clients.

Storm Clouds Gather
It was as pleasant a life as any he captured in his many paintings. But storm clouds were gathering. Photographs taken of Renoir during the 1890s show definite swelling in the joints of his fingers and hands. Owing to Renoir’s cheerful disposition and his tendency to brush off any discomfort, the early stages of RA had little effect on his life and work. But a fall from his bicycle in 1897, which broke his right arm, hastened the advance of the inflammation. For the rest of his life, Renoir would experience episodes of pain and immobility.

Renoir at work in his studio. His wheelchair was considered quite modern at the time.
Renoir at work in his studio. His wheelchair was considered quite modern at the time.

Few medications were then available to relieve the pain of RA; antipyrine, which was commonly used, had toxic side effects. Intense physical therapy also offered some chance to retain limited use of inflamed joints. But Renoir realized that so much time and energy would be invested in his therapy program that there’d be nothing left over for his paintings. So, given few alternatives, Renoir chose art over mobility and spent the next 22 years producing over 400 masterpieces. As remarkable as Renoir’s output were the means that he and his family took to make sure he remained productive. In 1908, he and his family moved to a big home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, where the warmer climate would provide Renoir some relief from pain. It was at “Les Colettes” where Renoir would find creative ways to keep producing even during the most extreme flare-ups of inflammation.

Contrary to popular belief, Renoir did not need to have paintbrushes tied to his hands. As his fingers started to curl inward towards his palms, he found alternate ways to slide the brush handles in between his curled fingers. The strips of cloth that were tied around his hands were a means to keep his fingernails from digging into his palms as he painted.

When it became more difficult for Renoir to move his arms, a device was created so large canvases could be rolled out like a scroll and he could paint one small section of canvas at a time. His palettes were attached to the armrests of his various wheelchairs with a pivoting device so he could turn them around easily to get the color he desired.

Of course, family members, models, hired help and other artists stepped in to assist Renoir as needed. Except for a brief outburst of temper when he fumed because he had to rely on someone else to help him perform even the simplest functions, Renoir remained cheerful and positive. The beauty of nature and the joy he felt in creating beauty proved to have a medicinal effect on him. He could literally work through his pain by painting. Late at night, when RA made sleep impossible, he would call for his paints and brushes and paint on small wooden boards. He would literally “zone out” from his temporal state and enter another world. “The pain passes, but the beauty remains,” he would explain.

Final Years
But in 1912, an extreme flare up of inflammation would make even the most limited movements of his arms and hands impossible. It was then that Renoir launched into a new outlet for his artistic drive — sculpture. From the beginning, the figures in Renoir’s paintings had a sculptural quality, so the transition from one medium to another was, technically, effortless. But what was required were two steady hands and arms that could move effortlessly. That problem was solved when Richard Guino, a young sculptor, became Renoir’s assistant. By giving directions to Guino — “take a little off here, make it rounder there …” –Renoir could continue his pursuit of beauty. Anyone viewing a Renoir sculpture next to one of his paintings can see that it is the same vision that guided the creation of both.

By 1915, the inflammation subsided enough to let Renoir return to painting. And just as before, his wife, sons, household help and friends all worked together to smooth the way for him. On a regular basis, admirers from all over the world –many of whom were young artists — arrived at Renoir’s home to pay homage to the Master. Seeing the devotion so many people had for him led one contemporary critic to call Renoir “the Pope of Painting.”

It was with considerable pleasure that Renoir saw himself, his work, and the movement he helped launch vindicated when his portrait joined the paintings of the masters he had revered for so many decades. It was the last time he would visit his beloved Paris.

Cheerful and productive to the end, he was busy painting a picture of a vase of anemones his youngest son, Claude, brought to him the morning of Dec. 3, 1919, the day he died. Always moving forward, always discovering something new in his art and in the world around him, his last words were, “I think I’m beginning to understand something about it.”


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