RENOIR, PIERRE AUGUSTE French painter, was born at Limoges on Feb. 25, 1841. He was the son of a tailor. At 13 he was apprenticed to a manufacturer of porce lain, and in painting on china he acquired a taste for pure and transparent colour and subtle brushwork. After earning some money in painting fans and blinds he entered the studio of Gleyre, where he became the friend of Sisley and Monet. He was in spired by Courbet to study nature ; he was interested in Dela croix's colour technique; and the work of Monet and Corot appealed to him. In his early work he followed, with pronounced modern modifications, certain traditions of the French 18th cen tury school. In the work of a later period colour was made sub servient to form under the influence of Ingres, and his search for volume and form induced him at the end of his life to take up modelling. In the '7os he threw himself into the impressionist movement and became one of its leaders. Renoir tried his skill in almost every genre—in portraiture, landscape, flower-painting, scenes of modern life and figure subject; he excelled in painting nude figures of women. His art breathes sensuality, transfigured
by lyrical feeling and plastic sense. His finest works rank among the masterpieces of the modern French school. Among these are some of his nude "Bathers," the "Rowers' Luncheon," the "Ball at the Moulin de la Galette," "The Box," "The Terrace," "La Pensee," and the portrait of "Jeanne Samary." He is represented in the Caillebotte room at the Luxembourg, in the collection 'of M. Durand-Ruel, and in most of the collections of impressionist paintings in France, in the United States, in Germany and in the Tate gallery, London. Renoir died on Dec. 17, 1919, at Cagnes in Provence, where he had settled in 1900. See PAINTING, Pl. XXV. See A. Vollard, La Vie et L'oeuvre de Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1019) and Impressionism; F. Fosca, Renoir (Eng. trans., 1924).