Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the leading painters of the Impressionist group. Renoir evolved a technique of broken brushstrokes and used bold combinations of pure complementary colours to capture the light and movement of his landscapes and figurative subjects.

Renoir’s early work featured characteristically Impressionist vignettes of real life as it appeared around him, brimming with colour and light. In the late 1860s and early 1870s Renoir worked alongside Monet along the Seine near Paris, between them evolving what was the characteristic Impressionist idiom. After several of Renoir’s paintings were rejected by the Paris Saoln in the early 1870s, Renoir joined Monet in establishing the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs which enabled these artists to exhibit their work collectively outside the strict confines of the academic painting accepted by the Salon. As a founding member of this movement, Renoir exhibited in the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in April 1874, but ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877.

Renoir’s skill as a portrait artist attracted the attention of a range of patrons with avant-guarde sensibilities and with numerous commissions underway, Renoir finally begun to achieve financial freedom. From the mid 1880s, inspired by visits to Italy, where he discovered the work of Raphael, and to Provence, where he worked with Cézanne, Renoir broke with the Impressionist movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings. From 1890 onwards, he reverted back to his earlier style using thinly applied brush strokes of pure colour through which the outlines of his subjects, figures, still lifes or landscapes would dissolve into mesmerising Impressionistic visions.