Renoir

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) began his working life painting porcelain plates, fans, and window blinds before beginning formal art study in 1862. Friendship with Monet and other artists influenced Renoir's development as an Impressionist, though unlike them, he preferred figure painting to landscapes and produced portraits of great tenderness. By 1880 he felt the need to change, and after some time in Italy decided he could not draw well, and began to copy Renaissance bas-reliefs, and to work with Cezanne, who influenced his use of colour.

Renoir's studies of women and children show his great love of their gentleness and beauty, and though crippled in his last years by arthritis, causing him to have his brushes bound to his wrists because he could no longer hold them in his hands, he continued to paint his glowing canvases. New Zealand Fine Prints Ltd stock a huge range of Renoir prints as the art of the impressionists never goes out of style!