Pierre Auguste Renoir
Pierre Auguste Renoir, (1841-1919). French impressionist painter. A friend of Monet and Alfred Sisley, Renoir contributed pictures to four impressionist exhibitions in the 1870s. He made use of pure bright colours in his pictures, which frequently portrayed women, children, and flowers. Towards the end of his life he adopted a more classical attitude towards the human figure, as in Women in Hats (1910). Although increasingly arthritic, he continued to paint and was able to sculpt with the aid of an assistant. He also produced over 150 lithographs. His son Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was a film director and screenwriter. He first became interested in the cinema while convalescing from wounds received in World War I and directed his first film in 1924. Most of, his early silent films starred his first wife Catherine Hessling. During the 1930s he switched to sound and produced his two masterpieces La Grande Illusion (1937), a profound pacifist statement, and La Regle du jeu (1939), a satire on French aristocratic society that aroused fierce hostility. During World War II he made a number of films in Hollywood. His last films, directed after his return to France in the 1950s, include Le De jeuner sur l’herbe (1959) and Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir (1971).
