Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) French, 2nd State Limited Edition Dry Point Etching. Title: "Chapeau Epingle." Signed in the plate lower left, first created 1894, published in 1910. Certificate of Authenticity attached to the back of the frame.  

Overall Size: 16 3/4 x 15 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 5 3/4 x 4 1/4 in. 

#6533 . 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a pioneering figure in the Impressionist movement, was born on February 25th, 1841, in Limoges, France. He began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris in 1862, after his first career painting porcelain in Limoges ended when the factory he worked at adopted mechanical production and cut many jobs. He had his first success at the Salon of 1868, but recognition was difficult to come by during his early lifetime, partly due to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War. Despite losing many friends and alienating himself from lovers and family alike with his fickle personality and lackadaisical attitude towards work, Renoir’s illustrious career spanned decades, characterized by his mastery of light, color, and the depiction of everyday life. He and Claude Monet revolutionized painting with their shared discovery of diffuse reflection, the revelation that the color of shadows on water is not brown or black but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. A distinct shift in his style came in the late 1870s when he lost access to a property he was staying on near Fontainebleau, and his richly textured canvases, already celebrated for their radiant hues and sensuous brushwork, began to depict cityscapes instead of landscapes. Now heralded for expertly capturing the essence of 19th Century Parisian society, much of his work focused on a celebration of beauty and feminine sensuality, creating controversy for their subject matter at times. Renoir’s oeuvre includes timeless masterpieces such as “Luncheon of the Boating Party” and “Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette,” which had a profound impact on generations of future artists. In the 1880s he traveled to Spain and Italy, convalescing for a time in Algeria after contracting pneumonia. In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, a dressmaker who was twenty years his junior and had served as one of his primary models for many years. Their children all went on to become artists in their own rights, including a stage actor, a filmmaker, and a ceramicist, encouraged by their famous father. Despite battling rheumatoid arthritis in his later years, Renoir continued to paint prolifically. They moved to a village called Cagnes-sur-Mer to be near a warmer climate, but he began to develop progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his shoulder, forcing him to change his entire painting technique. In his final years he used a moving canvas and painted by having an assistant place brushes in his hands. He passed away on December 3rd, 1919, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most influential painters in the history of Western art.