Works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Painting outdoors with Claude Monet in the late 1860s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir found that a shadow is not brown or black but takes its colour from the things around it.

At thirteen Renoir left school for a porcelain factory; in 1862 he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Monet. In The Promenade of 1870 a couple walk a woodland path and the woman's white dress takes blue and green from the leaves, though the dark greens and browns still recall Gustave Courbet. Bal du moulin de la Galette, shown at the third Impressionist exhibition, is a crowded dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, near his home, where sunlight falls in pale spots on jackets, straw hats and a striped dress.

In 1881 he went to Italy, saw Raphael, Leonardo and Titian, and decided he had taken a wrong path. For some years he stressed drawing and the outlines of figures. In By the Seashore, from 1883, the young woman's face is smooth and closely modelled, while the cliff and the sea behind her are brushed in loosely. After 1890 he went back to thin colour that melts the edges, and turned to scenes at home such as Two Young Girls at the Piano, where a girl in pink leans over to follow the music.

Arthritis set in around 1892; from 1907 he lived on a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, near the Mediterranean. He painted on, an assistant putting the brush in his hand. Nearly all the works below are paintings, women most of all, with some flowers and landscapes and a few prints and drawings.

Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, J. Paul Getty Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée d'Orsay.