Pierre Auguste Renoir

1841 - 1919

Renoir's youthful experience as a painter on porcelain had a lasting influence on his art, contributing a love of fluid transparencies and introducing him to the eighteenth century Rococo artists. He had a great admiration for Delacroix and, during his formative years, was also influenced by Manet, Courbert, and Corot. Renoir's modern-life figure painting reflected his Parisian artisan background and, while his work with Monet in the late 1860s encouraged him to paint landscapes, he never abandoned his commitment to the human form.

Renoir can thus be distinguished from such painters as Monet, Sisley or Pissarro both in the importance he placed on figure painting, particularly the female nude, and by his transparent, rich surfaces, as his fellow artists used impasted opaque paint films.

He preferred pale grounds, using tinted primings in the 1870s and white thereafter. Also preferredsolid, heavy canvas which he considered more durable, and his paint layer was typically thin, delicate, and diluted with a medium of oil and turpentine which made even opaque colours translucent. The luminosity and brillance of Renoir's colour is thus derived from this use of transparent and translucent colour brushed thinly over pale grounds which glow through the paint layer.

Renoir would aplly his colour using a wet-in-wet technique, slurring tints in order not to lose their purity by over-mixing.

Woman's Torso in Sunlight - 1875 - Pierre Auguste Renoir - Oil on Canvas - 32x25 in.

 1. A fairly fine-weave canvas was bought ready-primed

with a single layer of pale, warm grey ground.

 2. Next. thin scumbles were laid down in dilute local colours with warm

reds for contours of flesh and the general shaded areas on the figure.

 3. The background was rapidly worked wet-in-wet

leaving the ground and canvas texture showing through.

 4. The figure was built up slowly working wet-in-wet and then with

thin wet-over-dry layers which obscured the canvas texture.

 5. Final additions to the figure and foliage such as the jewellery and red stains in the flesh

area were made to enrich shadows and cool contrasting complementary colours.

If you wish a more detailed picture of "Woman's Torso in Sunlight", please send an email, and I will give it to you in jpeg format, and of course, completely free. : )