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Friday Filosophy v.01.20.2023

Friday Filosophy v.01.20.2023

Friday Filosophy v.01.20.2023 offers quotes and words of wisdom from Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau.” 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in LimogesHaute-Vienne, France, in 1841. His father, Léonard Renoir, was a tailor of modest means, so, in 1844, Renoir’s family moved to Paris in search of more favorable prospects. The location of their home, in rue d’Argenteuil in central Paris, placed Renoir in proximity to the Louvre. Although the young Renoir had a natural proclivity for drawing, he exhibited a greater talent for singing. His talent was encouraged by his teacher, Charles Gounod, who was the choirmaster at the Church of St Roch at the time. However, due to the family’s financial circumstances, Renoir had to discontinue his music lessons and leave school at the age of thirteen to pursue an apprenticeship at a porcelain factory. 

In 1862, he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred SisleyFrédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. At times, during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. During the Paris Commune in 1871, while Renoir painted on the banks of the Seine River, some Communards thought he was a spy and were about to throw him into the river, when a leader of the Commune, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Cœur and his family ended, and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association but also a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest. This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.

Hoping to secure a livelihood by attracting portrait commissions, Renoir displayed mostly portraits at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. He contributed a more diverse range of paintings the next year when the group presented its third exhibition; they included Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and The Swing. Renoir did not exhibit in the fourth or fifth Impressionist exhibitions, and instead resumed submitting his works to the Salon. By the end of the 1870s, particularly after the success of his painting Mme Charpentier and her Children (1878) at the Salon of 1879, Renoir was a successful and fashionable painter. 

In 1883, Renoir spent the summer in Guernsey, one of the islands in the English Channel with a varied landscape of beaches, cliffs, and bays, where he created fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin’s, Guernsey. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.

Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of “Les Collettes”, a farm at the village of Cagnes-sur-MerProvence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, close to the Mediterranean coast. Renoir died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on 3 December 1919. 

  • An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.
  • The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
  • Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.
  • To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.
  • One must from time-to-time attempt things that are beyond one’s capacity.
  • One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.
  • Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.
  • Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.
  • Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.
  • Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.
  • I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.
  • There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.
  • Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.
  • When I’ve painted a woman’s bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.
  • The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.
  • I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.
  • There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.
  • The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.

The Time is Now.

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