Pierre-Auguste Renoir: An Influence

Ever since I was introduced to the Impressionists as a kid, I've been attracted to the artwork by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Recently, I read about his life, influences, and major paintings from a short book that's been living on my bookshelf for years. His focus on plein air painting, people, and his use of color have subsequently inspired my artwork. 

Early in Renoir's training, he was taught to paint outside. En plein air means out-of-doors, and that kind of painting became a hallmark of the impressionists. Their aim was to catch the light, the movement, the weather, the season as it was in that hour, on that day, on that week: to paint exactly what their eyes saw on location rather than recreating a scene in the studio with careful palettes, brushstrokes, and compositions. Renoir eventually combined this knowledge with classic studio work, but his pure plein air paintings have a unique freshness and vigor of color, brushwork, and movement.  Instead of oils, I use colored pencils to create art en plein air, but I'm able to enjoy nearly the same experience as Renoir and the impressionists and I am completely enamored with the technique. 

Renoir painted many people in his lifetime: in scenes of crowds, in landscapes and portraits; people dancing, relaxing, interacting. Although en plein air artists typically painted mere landscapes, Renoir often added people to his work, which gave the scenes greater interest and animated them with narrative. His large paintings of groups of people swirl with emotion, color, and gesture. I can easily come up with stories for each couple and clique conversing over a meal or dancing or looking out on a river and smoking. Many of Renoir's paintings of people were commissioned portraits but also included family, his children's nanny, and friends. Not only do his portraits capture the sitter's personality and mood; the depiction of clothes, rooms and buildings give a historical context that is educational in its own right. Like Renoir, I have a lifelong interest in drawing people; I am consistently curious about how to recreate a likeness, a pose, a complexion, an idiosyncrasy. 

Renoir defined many of his subjects not with contrast of light and dark, but with contrast of warm and cool colors. Often, the light source is unclear or its effects are secondary to the pure colors of the subject. Everything is ethereal, feathery, almost blurry. Instead of using graduated shading from dark to light to delineate form, Renoir uses the difference in color temperature of one form or surface against another to describe them. The viewer understands exactly what is occurring in these paintings, but if they were to take a black and white photo of them, they would be uncommonly boring. The placement of a sage green against a cherry red is where the magic occurs. Taking a step back, the painting coalesces in real time as the eye merges the loose brushstrokes and categorizes the colors into warms and cools: where cool colors recede into the background and warm colors advance. A portrait wondrously emerges from a flat, amorphous field of color. I have a great love for high contrast art, but after taking a color theory class and researching Renoir's work, I am slowly being seduced by the possibilities of color.