Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style.

Quotes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

chronologically arranged, after dates of the quotes of Renoir

Renoir, 1883: 'Les Parapluies / The Umbrellas', oil-painting

1870's

[ Bazille..] had not died romantically, galloping over a Delacroix' battlefield.. ..but stupidly, during the retreat, on a muddy road.. ..that pure-hearted gentle knight.. [quote, shortly after 1870, on the death of Bazille].
- as cited in Renoir, my Father, Jean Renoir; p. 124; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 83 + 94

What are we supposed to do [reacting furiously on art-critic Jules Castagnary who proclaimed the so-called new School of Impressionism, 29 April 1874 in the Paris journal 'Le Siècle'] about these stupid literary people who will never understand that painting is a craft! You make it with materials, not ideas! The ideas come afterwards, when the painting is finished.
- As quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe, Harper-Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 127

Alas I shall very probably not be able to dine with you [madame Charpentier who frequently had receptions in Paris which Renoir frequently visited]. I began a portrait this morning; I begin another this evening, and it is extremely likely that I shall have a third to do afterwards. If I have to stay for dinner, and begin tomorrow, all these people will go away, and my head is in a complete muddle with them.
- in a letter to madame Charpentier, c. 1876; as quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates / Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 80

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

1880's

He [ Richard Wagner ] was very happy but very nervous [Renoir proposed him to paint his portrait].. .In short, I think I spent my time well, thirty five minutes is not long, but if I had stopped sooner it would have been better, because my model [Wagner] ended up by losing some of his good humor, and he became stiff. I followed these changes too closely [in the portrait].. .At the end Wagner asked to see it. He said 'Ah! Ah! It's true that I look like a Protestant minister'. But I [Renoir] was very happy it wasn't too much of a flop: There is something of that admirable face in it'
- Quote of Renoir, in his letter to a friend, 15 Jan. 1882; as cited in 'Pierre Auguste Renoir - Richard Wagner', text of museum D'Orsay
- At the beginning of 1882, Renoir was travelling in the south of Italy and visited Palermo where Wagner was staying. Renoir proposed a short sitting for the following day and Wagner agreed; he had just finished his 'Parsifal'.

It [his participating in the 7th exhibition of the Impressionists, combined with showing his work on the official Salon] isn't exactly a joy, but as I have said, it lets me out of the revolutionary side of the business, which I'm nervous of.. .It's a little weakness which I hope will be forgiven me [by the other impressionists].. .Delacroix used to say, quite rightly, that a painter should win as many honours as possible.
- Quote of Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruel, end of Feb. 1882; as cited in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 172

.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.
- 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, Guernsey museum

Nature abhors a vacuum, say the physicists. They could complete their axiom by adding that it has no less a horror of regularity.
Observers know in effect that in spite of the apparent simplicity of the laws which preside at their formulation, the works of nature are infinitely varied, from the most important to the least...
At this time when our French art, still at the beginning of this century so full of penetrating charm and exquisite fantasy, is perishing because of regularity, dryness, and the mania of false perfection that now tends to make the unadorned cleanliness of the engineer into the ideal, we think it is useful to react promptly against the mortal doctrines which threaten to annihilate it...
- (1884) proposal for a "Society of Irregularists"; as quoted by Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988) p. 192; citing Linello Venturi, ed., Les Archives de l'impressionnisme (1939) Vol. 1, pp. 127-128.

Renoir – his life and work, 1975

Quotes of Renoir, 1880's - taken from: Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates / Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975

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

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

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.
- pp. 156-157 : a letter to Théodore Duret, March 1881

..I have suddenly become a traveler, and I am afflicted with a fever for seeing Raphael's. So I am in the process of swallowing up Italy. Now, I will be able to say straight out: 'Yes, sir. I have seen some Raphael's, I have seen Venice the Fair, etc'.
- p. 159 : in a letter to madame Charpentier, Autumn 1881

Shall I tell you what I have seen in Venice? Right – here goes. Take a boat along the Seine to the Quai des Orfevres, or opposite the Tuileries [Paris] and you will see Venice. For the Museums, go to the Louvre, For Veronese, go to the Louvre,- but not for Tiepolo, whom I didn't know; only it is a bit dear at the price. No – that isn't true; it is very, very beautiful, when the weather is fine. The lagoon and San Marco – splendid; the Doges' palace, splendid. As for the rest, I'd rather have Saint German l'Auxerrois.
- p. 159-160 : in a letter to madame Charpentier, Autumn 1881

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

What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.
- p. 164 : quote from Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruell, 1882, referring to a small painting with trees of the landscape-painter Corot

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

How wonderful the Doges' palace is! That pink and white marble must have been a bit cold at first, but it was magical for me, seeing it gilded by several centuries of sunlight! And the basilica of San Marco! That was what converted me from those cold Italian Renaissance churches.. ..as soon as one goes into San Marco one feels one is in a real place of worship – that gentle filtered light and those magnificent mosaics and the great Byzantine Christ with the grey aureole! If one hasn't been in San Marco it is impossible to imagine the beauty of heavy pillars and columns without any moulding!
- p. 161-162 : (1882), in a letter to Vollard

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.
- p. 161-162 : (1882), in a letter to Vollard

- It [Raphael's art] really is fine, and I ought to have seen it all sooner. It is full of knowledge and wisdom. He [Raphael] wasn't trying to do the impossible, like me. But it's beautiful. I like Ingres better for oil painting. But the frescoes are admirable for simplicity and grandeur.

- p. 163-164 : (1882) in a letter to Durand-Ruel

You know how I feel painting a skin which won't take the light well. And on top of that, it was fashionable at the time for women to be pale, so Madame de Bonnieres was as pale as wax, you may be sure. I kept saying to myself 'If only she could get a good steak inside her, just once!'.. ..and her hands! She put them in water before the sitting, to accentuate their whiteness.. .Just imagine! I come across one of the most charming women it is possible to meet, and she doesn't want to have any colour in her cheeks!
- p. 175 : (1886) Renoir's remark to Vollard [Renoir had been commissioned to portray Madame Robert de Bonnieres in 1886].

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.
- 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.

after 1900

I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child. I want a red to be sonorous—to sound, like a bell; if it doesn't turn out that way, I put more reds or other colors till I get it. I am no cleverer than that. I have no rules and no methods; any one can look over my materials or watch how I paint—he will see that I have no secrets. I look at a nude; there are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.
Nowadays they want to explain everything. But if they could explain a picture it wouldn't be art. Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? It must be indescribable and it must be inimitable. ...So in our Gothic architecture: each column is a work of art, because the old French monk who set it up and carved its capital did what he liked—not doing everything alike, as... when things are made by machinery or by rules, but each thing different—like the trees in the forest.
The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.
- (1908) answering Walter Pach's question concerning Renoir's method, as quoted by Walter Pach, "Renoir", Scribner's Magazine (1912) Vol. 51, pp. 610-612,; see also John Rewald, History of Impressionism (1946) p. 428, giving the year 1908 and quoting from Pach's article "Renoir", as reprinted in Walter Pach, Queer Thing, Painting (1938).

I want to give something [a painting to museum The Luxembourg in Paris, c. 1910] I can't be sure of doing again. I could do ten more nudes like that one [a large nude painting, suggested by Georges Riviere], whenever I liked.. .This one turned out well. I don't think I'd be able to do that again.
- a remark to George Riviere, (c. 1910); as quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 230

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. [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

Give me that palette.. ..those two woodcocks.. ..turn this one's head to the left.. ..give me back my palette.. ..I can't paint that beak.. ..Quick, some paint.. ..change the position of those woodcocks...
- quote from a letter written by Félix Fénéon, published in 'Le Bulletin des artistes' 15th December 1919
- this quote is expressing Renoir's last painter-remark, 30 November 1919, three days before he died.

undated quotes

undated quotes of Renoir

There is something in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is the essential. You come to Nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.
- As quoted in Masterpieces of painting from the National Gallery of Art (1944), p. 168

The pain passes but the beauty remains.
- As quoted in: Instituto Nacional de Previsión (Spain) (1974). 6.o Congreso Internacional de Medicina Fisica: 2-6 julio 1974. p. 424
- Renoir replied to Matisse, who had asked him why he persisted in painting at the expense of such torture.

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

For me, a painting must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty - yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more.
- As quoted in: Faber Birren (1965) History of color in painting: with new principles of color expression. p. 284-5
- Alternative translation:
  To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.
  - As quoted in Luncheon of the Boating Party‎ (2007) by Susan Vreeland

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination, will be the greatest!
- Quoted in: Giles Auty (1977) The Art of Self-Deception: An Intelligible Guide, p. 88

About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse
- In: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;
- Benicka (1980) commented:
  The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.

What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.
- Quoted in: Charles Altieri (1989) Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry, p. 169: Talking about the movement of Impressionism.

One morning one of us had run out of black; and that was the birth of Impressionism.
- Klaus Honnef, ‎Ingo F. Walther, ‎Karl Ruhrberg (1998) Art of the 20th Century: Painting. p. 7

..not exactly prostitutes, but a class of unattached young women, characteristic of the Parisian scene before and after the Empire, changing lovers easily, satisfying any whim, going nonchalantly from a mansion in the Champs-Elyseées to a garret in the Batignolles. [describing the place w:Bain à la Grenouillère at Croissy-sur-Seine and the women there, where Renoir together with Monet painted in open air and used them as models in their paintings 'la Grenouillère', 1868-69]
- as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 59

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.
- Tibballs Geoff, ‎Geoff Tibballs (2012) The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes, p. 80

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.
- Quoted in Jean Renoir (2001). Renoir: My Father. New York: New York Review of Books. p. 137. ISBN 9780940322776.

Renoir – his life and work, 1975

Quotes from:Renoir – his life and work Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates / Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975

He Corot was always surrounded by a crowd of fools and I didn't want to get caught up in it. I admired him from a distance.
- p. 12 : Renoir's remark to Vollard referring to the pre-impressionist landscape-painter Camille Corot.

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

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.
- p. 64 : Renoir's remark to Vollard referring to the Impressionist artists's Monet, Sisley and Pissarro.

They've found fault with me enough, in all conscience, for putting violet shadows on bodies.
- p. 80 : Renoir to Vollard, referring to his color-use.

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.
- p. 150 : a quote from Vollard's book

What a charming girl! And what a skin! She positively radiated light around her.
- p. 150 : Recalling the model Jeanne Samary.

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.
- p. 175 : Renoir's remark to Vollard.

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

Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.
- p. 176 : to Vollard. Renoir was referring to two of his landscapes, painted in the open air, having a different look in the studio light.

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.
- p. 176 : Renoir's remarks to Vollard, criticizing landscape painting in a direct way, because of loosing composition.

The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.
- p. 178 ; Renoir's remark to Vollard, criticizing the so-called 'new' discoveries by Impressionism.

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

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

Quotes about Renoir

chronologically arranged, after dates of the quotes about Renoir

Gazing at Renoir's water you feel blisters on your palm as if you had been rowing.
- Osip Mandelstam JOURNEY TO ARMENIA translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)

He [Renoir] has no talent at all, that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him please to give up painting.
- Édouard Manet, (1874) remark to Claude Monet, as cited by John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, Vol.1 (1961)

I have a dream a picture of the bathing spot at the Grenouillere, for which I've made a few poor sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.
- Claude Monet (1869) letter to Frédéric Bazille, September 25, 1869; as cited in: Bonafoux (1986, 72), cited in Michael P. Farrell (2003) Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work. p. 42.

Try telling M. Camille Pissarro that trees are not purple, or the sky the colour of butter; that the things he paints cannot actually be seen anywhere in nature.. ..try to explain to M. Renoir that a woman's torso is not a rotten mass of flesh, with violet-toned green spots all over it, indicating a corps in the final stage of decay.
- Albert Wolff (1876) quote of the French art-critic in the Paris paper 'Figaro', 1876, criticizing the second Impressionist exhibition: 'Salon des Refugées'; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 154.

Renoir is a great success on the [Paris'] Salon; I think he is 'launched'. All the better! It's a very hard life, being poor.
- Camille Pissarro, letter to Mr. Murer, 27th May 1879, as quoted in Renoir – his life and work Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 129.

He [Renoir] fears neither rain nor mud; he wants to paint a large canvas of naked boys playing with the sunlight playing on them; for this he wants it not to be too hot, and for there to be some sun; the children want there to be no wind and for it not to be cold, so they can pose naked in the water for two or three hours.
- Madame Emile Blanche (the mother of one of Renoir's friends), letter to her husband, 20 July 1881; as cited in 'Renoir in Guernsey' (in 1883), text by John House, Guernsey museum, p. 12.

I insist upon 'doing it alone'. Much as I enjoyed making the trip there with Renoir as a tourist, I'd find it hard to work there together. I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.. .If he [Renoir] knew I was about to go, Renoir would doubtless want to join me and that would be equally disastrous for both of us. [Monet is painting then in Northern Italy then, on the edge of the Mediterranean.
- Claude Monet, letter to his art-saler Durand-Ruel in Paris, 1884; as quoted in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 51.

Apparently Renoir has destroyed all the work he did last summer [of 1886] . . . He is exhibiting only a very few things [at the Paris Impressionism-exhibition, of M. Petit, May 1887], but they are extremely interesting; Whistler, too, is showing with us as well as Puvis de Chavannes.
- Camille Pissarro, letter to his son Lucien, Eragny, 25 February 1887; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; Tr., Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 104.

I have had a long talk with Renoir. He admitted that the whole crowd – Durand-Ruel and his former admirers – were shouting at him, deploring his attempt to abandon his 'Romantic' period. He seems very sensitive to what we think of his exhibition. I told him that as far as we were concerned, the search for unity should be the aim of every intelligent artist – that even in spite of serious faults, it was more intelligent and artistic than wallowing in romanticism.
- Camille Pissarro, letter to his son, 14th May 1887, as quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 189.

As for Renoir [with regard to his paintings at the Paris Impressionism-exhibition, of M. Petit, May 1887], again the same hiatus. I do understand what he is trying to do, it is proper not to want to stand still, but he chose to concentrate on the line, his figures are all separate entities, detached from one another without regard for color; the result is something unintelligible. Renoir, without the gift for drawing, and without his former instinctive feeling for beautiful colors, becomes incoherent.
- Camille Pissarro, letter to his son Lucien, Paris, 14 May, 1887; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; Tr., Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 108.

I had a long conversation with Renoir. He admitted to me that everybody, Durand-Ruell and his former collectors attacked him, deploring his attempts to go beyond his romantic period. He seems to be very sensitive to what we think of his show; I told him that for us the search for unity was the end towards which every intelligent artist must bend his efforts, and that even with great faults it was more intelligent and more artistic to do this than to remain enclosed in romanticism. Well, now he doesn't get any more portraits to do.
- Camille Pissarro, letter to his son Lucien, Paris, 1 October 1888; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; Tr., Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 132. Note: At about this time, Renoir, absorbed mostly by the problems of linear form, made a great many drawings and painted in a style which has since become known as his 'Ingresque' period.

If you could see what these flowers are. [ Morandi is watching flowers in the corner of a reproduction of a painting by w:El Greco – beneath the feet of angels and saints]. No modern painter has painted flowers like these. Perhaps only Renoir.
- Giorgio Morandi, as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 48.

In eighteenth-century art, Renoir found an echo of his convictions that man's natural proclivities were the source of art and of goodness. Once, he tells us in his writings, religion was a support for the imagination, but modern man, devoted to industry, engineering and the "false mania of perfection," has cast God out. Like John Ruskin, he believed that nature, not God, was now man's guide to spiritual and physical goodness, and like Wordsworth, he believed that nature was the place where man could free himself from the taint of civilization. There he could listen to his instinctive inner being, and by acting according to his own nature, he could rediscover nature at large. "Go and see what others have produced," reads one of his aphorisms, "but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character."
- Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988) p. 192; citing Renoir quote from Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962) Tr. Randolph & Dorothy Weaver, p. 244.

The enemy of natural instinct, according to Renoir, was the spirit of rationalism in the urban-industrial world, the rationalism which he associated both with industry, and with the Renaissance-derived traditions of the hated Ecole des Beaux-Arts, rather than with the Gothic, whose buildings he praised in his 1877 polemic. Together with others of his generation, he regarded reason as a tool of modern industrial organization, a tyranny that subjected feelings to mere calculation. At the age of seventeen, then a craftsman in a porcelain works, he had been put on the street by new machinery which made hand painting redundant.
- Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988) p. 192.

Renoir's free brushwork... is an expression of his society's longing for signs of those values that were threatened by the organization of the urban-industrial world: spontaneity, individualism, and the freedom to find consolation among natural things. ...[T]hose values were associated with leisure, with dancing, flowers, a Sunday outing in a park. His paintings of gardens and promenades embody ideals whose social meanings we recognize... the demand that social restraints be lifted to make room for natural instincts, the demand for access to nature, for leisure to cultivate the self—what are these, in another form, but the demands of that era's labor unions and social reformers? ...[S]truggles for more leisure, for more independence from the workplace, and as the unions grew stronger, the activities they organized for their members grew from picnics to suburban outings, and eventually to vacation camps in the country or on the seashore.
- Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988) p. 193.

At Argenteuil [where Claude Monet had built a little wooden cabin on his studio-boat], he [Renoir] and Monet resumed their old habit of painting the same views seated side by side. Life was beginning to change for the better; 1872 seemed to be a year not only for recovery [of the war years] but also for putting down roots.
- Sue Roe, The private lives of the Impressionists, Harper-Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 120.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

'Renoir in Guernsey' (in 1883), text by John House, 19 pages (including 2 translated letters of Renoir: Sept. 1883)