Subject : Art History
Title: Better Known an Artist
Prepared for : Ms Nor Asfarina
New Media Design
Digital Animation
Graphic Design
Graphic Design
Sim Zi Wei_2017050638
New Media Design
Logender Rao _2017050648
Digital Animation
Content
1. Introduction
1.1.Rationales
2. Body
2.1 The Artist’s Life / Social Background
2.2 The Art Movement Involved
2.3 Personal Artistic Style
2.4 Artworks Critique
2.4.1 Luncheon Of The Boating Party
-Description
-Analysis
-Interpretation
-Judgment
2.4.2 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette
-Description
-Analysis
-Interpretation
-Judgment
2.4.3 Les Grandes Baigneuses
-Description
-Analysis
-Interpretation
-Judgment
3. Conclusion
4. Bibliography
1.1.Rationales
For this reading report of art history class, we had decided to choose a well-known painter from Impressionism style Pierre Auguste Renior. There are various reason why we choose this painter. In here we are going to inform three reasons about it.
First of all, the reason we chose this painter is because he had a personal style that is different than the others painter. If a painting can peep into painter’s state of mind, then, Pierre-Auguste Renior sure is a passionate, romantic and optimistic painter. In every of his painting, there’s a story behind it. He likes to draw people no matter they are famous or not, he usually draws children and women but not men. His paintings are always filled with laughter, whether it is "Bal du moulin de la Galette" or "Luncheon of the Boating Party", everyone in the painting is relaxed and laughing. While watching these paintings, you can vaguely hear melodious dance, brisk rhythm, or the clinking sound of the glass.
On the next occasion, Renoir is one of the founder of Impressionism, is also the most widely known among the Impressionism painter. Impressionist painting is characterized by the brush without modification, wide composition, focusing on changes in light and shadow, the impression of time, and life in the ordinary things as a description, so greatly welcomed by the French civilians. Impressionist painting has various scenery, the waves, the water, the blooming wilderness, the people who are immersed in the sun, and attracts countless people to appreciate, marvel and inspiration, the charm of this painting, more profoundly confirms the eternal art and the culture of mankind affinity. The young painters of the Impressionist often gather together, paint together, chat together, discuss the paintings together, eat and drink together, and the pancake mill is the place where they are most often stopped.
Finally, we choose Pierre Auguste Renior because he has a strong personality. As a result, you will always hear criticism about him when discussing art related topic. His painting les grandes baigneuses received severe criticism because of his new and modern style. His painting also considered the crisis of impressionist movement. Following that, Pierre Auguste Renior never again painting this calibre. Subsequently, nowadays his artworks are very popular and were appreciated among the art collector. There are even a few movies about him such as ‘Renoir’ telling the stories of his journey.
2.1 Background of Pierre Auguste Renoir
Pierre Auguste Renoir was born on 25 February 1841.He was a famous French impressionist artist who was also one of the leaders in the development of the Impressionist style. One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. His drawing style inherited Peter Paul Rubens and Jean-Anthony Vato's tradition, especially for the feminine sensuality.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born into a working class family in Limoges, a city in the central west region of France. In 1862, he began to learn the art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. He didn’t have enough money to buy paint during the 1860s. With his painting Lise with a Parasol (1867), Renoir had his first success at the Salon of 1868. His recognition was slow in coming, although he first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1964 due to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
Renoir is well- known for his flourishing Parisian modernity painting and leisure painting in the last 3 decades of 19th century. Besides that, Renoir was the first Impressionist to perceive the potential limitations of an art. Renoir is a leader of impressionism. He and some of his friends show their works in Paris in 1874 which also known as the first Impressionism exhibition.
Renoir began to settle down as his fame grew and finally married Aline Victorine Charigot in 1890.Aline Victorine Charigot had already served as a model for Luncheon of the Boating Party with a number of the artist’s friends in 1881.Renoir had a son called Pierre, who born in 1885.After his marriage, Renoir had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
As Renoir aged, he continued to use his trademark feathery brushstrokes to depict primarily rural and domestic scenes. He battled with rheumatism in the mid-1890s and the disease plagued him for the rest of his life.
Renoir bought some land in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1907 and built a home for his family. He continues to work and paint, although rheumatism had disfigured his hand which made his hand permanently curled. He also had a stroke in 1912 which left him in a wheelchair.
Renoir suffered a heart attack at his home in the winter of 1919 and passed away on 3 December 1919. He was buried next to his wife who died in 1915 in her hometown of Essoyes, France.
2.2 The Art Movement Involved
Impressionism started to develop in Paris in the 1860s and it was considered the first modern art movement in painting. Impressionists focus on painting momentary scenes like fleeting impression on colour and light. So, the object in the painting was more on the artist’s perception rather than the actual view of the object. Their paintings were colourful, bright and mostly were outdoor scenes. Not only that, they also preferred their paintings not detailed but painted with bold and bright colours. The characteristics of Impressionism can be seen clearly in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s work. His paintings were mostly bright, vibrant with colours and blurry such as La Grenouillère (1869).
2.3 Personal Artistic Style
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was known as a master of light, shadow and colour where his paintings were usually bright and vibrant. He liked to show the effect of sunlight on humans and objects. Moreover, the scenes of his painting were mostly outdoor like places crowded with people and gardens. His brush strokes were bold and creates blurry effects to the artwork. He also showed a great interest in female forms as there’s a few of his art has nude female like The Large Bathers (1887). After the exploration of the Renaissance’s art, his works had become more composed, matured and structured.
2.4 Art Critique
2.4.1 Luncheon Of The Boating Party
This painting’s title is “Luncheon Of The Boating Party” by Pierre Auguste Renoir. The size of this painting is 130.20 cm (51.26 inch) × 175.60 cm (69.13 inch). It is an oil painting on canvas. It was produced at the height of Renoir´s Impressionist career, in 1881.This painting was currently displayed in The Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia.
''Luncheon of the Boating Party'' was one of his most important works of the early days, he uses different tones of light.This combination of colour and light show that the painting is in a cheerful and relaxed situation. This painting is strong, full of light, the background of the painting with the two sides had created a contrast, the background seems to be only as abstract stains and enhance the picture of joy, vivid atmosphere. He uses reddish-brown or pink as the main colours to portray the human body and lined with light yellow, green and blue to form the background.This painting is easy to let people thought of Pierre Auguste Renoir's huge and full of life and passion of the human body and character image.
The painting depicts Pierre Auguste Renoir and his friends on the balcony of the Maison Fournaise restaurant on the Seine, drinking wine and a pleasant conversation together. Parisians often go to the Maison Fournaise restaurant, rent a boat to play, or enjoy a meal at night. The painting also shows the social transformation of France in the mid-nineteenth century. The restaurant welcomes customers of different classes. such as businessmen, ladies of high society, painters, actresses, writers, critics, women's tailors, and saleswoman. These people together to form a new, modern Paris society. It seems that Pierre Auguste Renoir's painting was not sketched before hand.
In my opinion, Luncheon of the Boating Party draw by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is one of the greatest paintings available in the world. This is because his painting was so composite with the film screen which can make the audience feel like they are very close to the characters in the painting. Besides that, the atmosphere, the theme and also the creative intentions in this painting are comparable with Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette.
Luncheon of the Boating Party is a complex painting as the painter draws 14 guests in a painting and at the same time challenge the staggered light from outdoor and indoor. Furthermore, there were also having some static object on the table and also some natural scenery in behind and the other texture of different materials. Under this kind of difficult challenge, he still able to handle it and win praises from some reviewer in the first exhibition.
The other reason that makes me judge it as a successful work as it shown the change of French society between the mid-19th century and the late period. This is because during that time the restaurant started to welcome customers from a variety of different classes to visit but not only aristocratic male. These varieties of people had form a new and modern Paris society together.
Although this painting seems like without prior study or preparation of the draft, but actually he had used few months times to make lots of changes to it. This painting became exquisite after it went through improvement, rearrangement and recreation.
As a perfect conclusion, Luncheon of the Boating Party is the most well-known and also the greatest masterpiece from Renoir. Thus, I like his work very well as the each stroke and brushes on this painting was so energetic to me.
2.4.2 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette
This painting’s title is Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. Its dimension is 131 cm x 175 cm and medium used is oil on canvas. It is painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir on 1876. This painting is located in museum named Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
The location in the painting is at Moulin de la Galette, a windmill located at Montmarte, Paris. People went to this place to eat and dance on Sundays. Renoir had spent his time painting the landscapes and he uses human, especially women, as the focus of this painting. The painting’s composition is well balanced even though it is crowded with people. He uses bright coloured brushstrokes to show movement of the figures and create depth. He uses dark and bold colours such as shades of blue, red and green for the clothing of the figures. He also bathes the figures with sunlight and shadow such as he uses soft pink and purples to create light patches. This gives the impression of sunlight filtering through the trees. The impression of the sunlight has shown the cheerful and summery feel in the painting. Not only that, it also shows the vibrancy of the scene. The way he blends the colours together had create a painting that is rich in form and with a fluidity of brush stroke.
I think this painting is describe the painter invite his friend to attend the party that held by him. His friend having fun to dance and carry on social activity. From the painting we know that the painter more mention on drawing women. The bright coloured brushstrokes is show that the movement of the figures and depths such as the the cloth wear by the women which is flesh color is brighter and the darker color one of the man with dark blue color show that the man is stand behind the women. The color of this also can help us to differentiate everyone at the party.
For the conclusion, we know that this painting is a successful artwork. For my personal opinion, i don’t like this painting because this painting is too complicated for me. However this painting is an successful artwork because from the painting we know that arrangement of the background, position of the people, the chair and the table is arrange properly. We can see clearly and know the theme of the painting directly.
2.4.3 Les Grandes Baigneuses
The third painting that we choose of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s artwork is Les Grandes Baigneuses. This painting is one of the well-known artwork of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This painting had been painted between 1884 and 1887. This painting is currently located in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia, United States. The medium used is oil in canvas and the dimension of the painting is 115cm x 170cm (3’10” x 5’5”).
As we can see, Renoir’s works are easy recognizable by the use of glaring colors, ebullient subjects, bold and contrasting outlines. This artwork has a sculptural quality, although the background of the painting is glimmer with impressionistic light. The skin of the women are very soft and it felt real because Renoir’s technique of broken brush strokes was mixed with brash colours to paint the light and motion of the subject. The water in the painting was very realistic and optimistic colors. The energy of his brushstrokes spread across the surface of women’s face and body gain the power of the smooth skin and relaxing light. The impression of women’s face was so pure that we can feel that they are enjoying their time bathing together in the sunlight. It represents movement with sincere compositions and lively colors. This painting have the pleasant painting and have very strong female figure.
Pierre Auguste Renoir had done numerous of studies and sketches for this painting for three years. This painting describes a moment of nude women bathing. As we can see in the painting, two nude women were taking their bath at the back. One of the ladies is trying to avoid splashes of water from the other woman. This artwork has a sculptural quality, although the background of the painting is glimmer with impressionistic light. We can feel an expression of eternal beauty of a painting. This painting is a crisis of impressionism so it means that this painting is not impressionism but in sense of reject impressionism. Besides that, if you look very closely of women with dark brown hair there was a ring on her finger which means that she is a married woman and she is able to enjoy the sun with other girls and I think it also represent the "moderness" of this painting. The landscape of the painting is absolutely modern of the 19th century and also an Impressionist landscape. If you look at the faces of the women, it’s very much look off Parisian women and we can feel very less like of classical figures of impressionism. Renoir’s painting is something different in his century. He is absolutely doing crisis of impressionism and it’s utterly absurd. At this time he convinced us that he is a fearless artist and don’t care what people say. He takes joy of his painting, he got our respect.
Our judgement of this artwork will be a very essential and masterpiece painting in the whole century. We like the work of Renoir art of impressionism Les Grandes Baigneuses because we can see ourselves in the painting, we can feel it the glimmer with impressionistic light that used. Besides that, the smooth skin that use oil and canvas are so smooth and impressive, we can see the skin are most likely natural and real. Renoir uses his brushwork and lightened his palettes to input pure and intense color, the perfect style. However, on the other hand there are also judgement from his century, many of the artist’s criticism him because of his advanced style of art. They also say he abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that served to distinguish the more important elements picture from the lesser ones. From this cause, many artist’s critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality.
3. Conclusion
From this research, I have learned the Artist’s painting technique, the art movement of the artist I also learn that a good artist should have an own style of drawing. The technique that I learn from the artist also gives me an inspiration for me to create my own painting’s style. A good artist also need to pay full attention, emotion and passionate into the painting because the audience will feel the mood of the painting. I also learn a lot of moral value from this artist such as the patient .He spends a lot of time at his early years to improve his technique of drawing.The most impressed me is the painting, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. The composition of this painting is very complex but we can saw the people, background and the furniture on painting clearly. The composition of this painting is complex but not disorder. This is the best of the masterpiece of the artist by my own opinion.
4. Bibliography
G. Klein, A. Pierre-Auguste Renoir Great Artists Set 2. ABDO Publishing Company, 2010. Print
