Pierre-Auguste Renoir quotes

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Birthdate: 25. February 1841
Date of death: 3. December 1919
Other names: Пьер Огюст Ренуар

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir , 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."He was the father of actor Pierre Renoir , filmmaker Jean Renoir and ceramic artist Claude Renoir . He was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir , son of Pierre.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Quotes Pierre-Auguste Renoir

„I am still going through an experimental stage. I'm not happy, and I keep scrubbing out and scrubbing out again. I hope this mania will pass... I'm like the children at school; the clean page has to be filled with good writing, and splash – a mess! I'm still making messes and I'm forty years old.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: 1880's, p. 169 : quote from Renoir's letter to his art-seller Durand-Ruel, 21st November 1881

Happiness, Hope, School, Children

„.. to express himself well, the artist should be hidden... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Quoted in: Raymond Durgnat (1974) Jean Renoir: Raymond Durgnat, p. 370
undated quotes

„It was a perpetual holiday – and what an assortment of people. You could still enjoy yourself in those days! Machinery didn't take up the whole of life; there was time for living, and we made the most of it... I found as many magnificent girls to paint as I wanted; in those days one wasn't reduced to following a little model around for an hour and then being treated as a disgusting old man at the end of it.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 28 : Renoir's quote to Vollard referring to the Isle Grenouillere, where he painted in 1869, together with Claude Monet.

Painting, Holiday, Time, Girl

„If I was accused of neglecting my art, or sacrificing my ideas for the sake of stupid ambition, then I would understand the critics; but as that isn't the case, there is nothing to be said. I sent a picture to the Salon for purely commercial reasons. Anyway, it is like some medicines – even if it does no good, it does no harm.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

other impressionist artists then refused to send in their work to the Salon
Source: 1880's, p. 128 : in a letter to art-dealer Durand-Ruel, March 1881

Understanding, Idea, Art, Stupidity

„Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 175 : Renoir's remarks to Vollard, referring to the delicate painting-style of Berthe Morisot's, the only French woman-artist of Paris Impressionism.

„People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 64 : Renoir's remark to Vollard referring to the Impressionist artists's Monet, Sisley and Pissarro.

Painting, People

„They've found fault with me enough, in all conscience, for putting violet shadows on bodies.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 80 : Renoir to Vollard, referring to his color-use.

„Landscapes are useful to a figure painter, too; out-of-doors one uses colours one would never think of in the weaker studio light. But landscape painting is a thankless job; you waste half a day for the sake of one hour's painting. You only finish one painting out of ten, because the weather keeps changing. You start work on a sunlight effect and it comes on to rain – or you had a few clouds in the sky, and the wind blows them away. It's always the same story!“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 196 : on painting landscape in open air, to art-buyer George Riviere.

Weather, Painting, Change, Light

„I'm struggling with flowering trees [in Spring 1881, shortly after his Algeria trip] and with women and children. I keep feeling regretful, all the same – I think of all the trouble I have given you for nothing, and I wonder how long you will put up with my womanish whims; and through all I keep seeing those pretty English girls [Duret invited him to visit England]. What a misfortune, always to be so undecided! But it's at the root of my character, and I'm too old to change.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: 1880's, pp. 156-157 : a letter to Théodore Duret, March 1881

Change, Tree, Thinking, Flowers

„I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 150 : a quote from Vollard's book

„I wanted to tell you that in about 1883 there occurred a kind of break in my work. I had got to the end of 'Impressionism', and I had come to the conclusion that I didn't either how to paint or how to draw. In short, I had come to a dead end.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 175 : Renoir's remark to Vollard.

Dead, Painting, Drawing

„I went to see this picture [Raphael's painting 'Madonna della Sedia' which Renoir saw in Florence in 1882] just to have a good laugh – and I found myself in front of the most wonderfully free, solid, simple, alive painting it is possible to imagine – arms and legs of real flesh, and what a touching expression of maternal tenderness.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: 1880's, p. 161-162 : (1882), in a letter to Vollard

Painting, Maternity, Imagination

„There are scarcely fifteen art-collectors in Paris capable of liking a painter without the backing of the Salon. There are eighty thousands of them who wouldn't buy a thing from a painter who is not in the [Paris'] Salon. I am not going to be so foolish as to condemn a thing just because of where it happens to be. In short, I'm not going to waste my time bearing a grudge against the Salon – I don't even want to look as if I do. To my mind, one must simply paint as well as one possibly can – and that's all.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: 1880's, pp. 127-128 : in his letter to Durand-Ruel (1880's), explaining his choice to participate in the yearly official Salon as well as in the Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, on the same time.

Painting, Time, Art

„One day, while I was painting a landscape in the neighbourhood of Algiers [March 1881] I saw a man approaching who seemed to be dressed in purple and cloth-of-gold... When the traveler reached me, my illusion vanished; my emir was nothing but a flea-bitten beggar. The sun, the divine sun had enriched him with its light... It's always the same in Algeria. The magic of the sun transmutes the palm-trees into gold, the water seems full of diamonds and men become the Kings from the East.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: 1880's, pp. 156-157 : quote, 1881 on the illusion by sunlight, from Renoir et ses amis, Georges Riviere.

Clothes, Painting, Sun, Water

„You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(before 1880) As quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 176
undated quotes

Time, Thinking, Nature

„It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Source: undated quotes, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Painting, Flowers, Feeling, Way

„. Here [ Guernsey ] people bath among the rocks which serve as cabins, since there's nothing else; nothing is more attractive than this mixture of women and men crowded on these rocks. One would belief oneself in a landscape by Watteau rather than in the real world. So I'll have a source of real and graceful motives which I will be able to make use of. Some enchanting bathing-costumes... Nothing is more amusing when one is strolling through these rocks, than to surprise young girls getting ready to bathe... Despite the small number of things that I'll be able to bring back [to Paris], I hope to be able to give you an idea of these charming things.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

In Renoir's letter to Paul Durand-Ruel, from Guernsey, 27 Sept, 1883; as cited in 'Renoir in Guernsey' (in 1883), text by John House http://museums.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=81297&p=0, Guernsey museum
1880's

Idea, Motivation, Girl, Hope

„What wonderful things [Renoir is reacting on Corot's painting 'Interior of Chartres Cathedral' and Delacroix's 'Interior of M. de Mornay’s house', – he saw in 1919 from his wheelchair, in the reopened painting-rooms of the Louvre]. There isn’t a single big picture worth any more than these two little ones... The Director [of the Louvre] was so charming to me. I wish I could have thanked him properly. If you meet him, tell him how much I enjoyed my visit. If I'd presented myself at the Louvre in my wheelchair thirty years ago, they'd have shot me out fast enough! You see, one has to live a long time to see such changes. I've been one of the lucky ones.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

December 1919, Renoir died
late quote of Renoir, c. 1919, in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 237
after 1900

Housing, Painting, Time, Change

„They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph.“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir, book Renoir

Quoted in [2001, Jean Renoir, Renoir: My Father, New York Review of Books, New York, 9780940322776, https://books.google.com/books?id=RR8Mk2QrvyoC&pg=PA137, 137]
undated quotes

„I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting from every aspect. So I am staying in the sun – not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters. Raphael didn't work out-of-doors, but he studied the sunlight all the same – his frescoes are full of it. So, by looking around outside, I have finished by seeing only the broad harmonies, and am no longer preoccupied with the little details, which only extinguish the sunlight, instead of increasing its brilliance. I hope therefore, when I get back to Paris, to produce something which will be the outcome of all these general studies, and to give you the benefit of them“

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

in a letter written during his three-weeks-stay, working with Paul Cezanne at l'Estaque, near Marseille
Source: 1880's, p. 169 in a letter to madame Charpentier, l'Estaque, January 1882

Painting, Sun, Study, Hope

„Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Etiam egestas wisi a erat. Morbi imperdiet, mauris ac auctor dictum.“

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