Renoir An Intimate Biography

A major new biography of this enduringly popular artist by the world’s foremost scholar of his life and work Expertly researched and beautifully written by the world’s leading authority on Auguste Renoir’s life and work, Renoir fully reveals this most intriguing of Impressionist artists. The narrative is interspersed with more than 1,100 extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, 452 of which come from unpublished letters. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Despite these hardships, much of his work is optimistic, even joyful. Close friends who contributed money, contacts, and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 paintings. Renoir had intimate relationships with fellow artists (Caillebotte, Cézanne, Monet, and Morisot), with his dealers (Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, and Vollard) and with his models (Lise, Aline, Gabrielle, and Dédée). Barbara Ehrlich White’s lifetime of research informs this fascinating biography that challenges common misconceptions surrounding Renoir’s reputation. Since 1961 White has studied more than 3,000 letters relating to Renoir and gained unique insight into his personality and character. Renoir provides an unparalleled and intimate portrait of this complex artist through images of his own iconic paintings, his own words, and the words of his contemporaries. “Barbara White is a biographer of courage, seriousness and unrelenting honesty. She has read and dissected about 3,000 letters about Renoir written by him, his friends, his family, as well as the newspapers of the day. Practically every member of the Renoir family has entrusted their personal documents to her – a pledge of trust totally deserved. Whenever I am asked a question about Auguste, I write to Barbara to ask her opinion or call on her knowledge, since she has become an indisputable reference for me. She is always careful and verifies facts and contexts by every route possible. The Renoir family, and Auguste himself, are very lucky that Barbara is so passionate about her subject, and I feel personally lucky to know her. I thank her from the bottom of my heart for this work of a lifetime – a magnificent success. I am very pleased that her book has been edited by the quality editors at Thames & Hudson, as it will remain a point of reference for many generations to come.” – Sophie Renoir (great-granddaughter of Auguste Renoir, granddaughter of his eldest son Pierre, and daughter of Renoir’s grandson Claude Renoir, Jr.), June 7, 2017

The joy that permeates Renoirs paintings was created by a complicated person. Even close friends and family members were often baffled by the multi-faceted and contradictory artist. Having known Renoir for over twenty years, Camille Pissarro complained in a letter to his son Lucien: Nor can I understand Renoirs mind but who can fathom the most changeable of men? Here, the worlds leading authority on the life and work of Auguste Renoir presents an intimate biography of this great Impressionist artist. Her narrative is interspersed with over a thousand extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, of which 452 come from unpublished letters. Through these words, the reader gains direct contact with Renoir, as an artist, friend and father. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Close friendships with scores of people who helped him with money, contacts and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 optimistic, life-affirming paintings. Barbara Ehrlich White brings a lifetime of research to bear in her biography to provide an unparalleled and intimate portrait of this complex artist.

A major new biography of this enduringly popular artist by the world’s foremost scholar of his life and work Expertly researched and beautifully written by the world’s leading authority on Auguste Renoir’s life and work, Renoir fully reveals this most intriguing of Impressionist artists. The narrative is interspersed with more than 1,100 extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, 452 of which come from unpublished letters. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Despite these hardships, much of his work is optimistic, even joyful. Close friends who contributed money, contacts, and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 paintings. Renoir had intimate relationships with fellow artists (Caillebotte, Cézanne, Monet, and Morisot), with his dealers (Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, and Vollard) and with his models (Lise, Aline, Gabrielle, and Dédée). Barbara Ehrlich White’s lifetime of research informs this fascinating biography that challenges common misconceptions surrounding Renoir’s reputation. Since 1961 White has studied more than 3,000 letters relating to Renoir and gained unique insight into his personality and character. Renoir provides an unparalleled and intimate portrait of this complex artist through images of his own iconic paintings, his own words, and the words of his contemporaries. “Barbara White is a biographer of courage, seriousness and unrelenting honesty. She has read and dissected about 3,000 letters about Renoir written by him, his friends, his family, as well as the newspapers of the day. Practically every member of the Renoir family has entrusted their personal documents to her – a pledge of trust totally deserved. Whenever I am asked a question about Auguste, I write to Barbara to ask her opinion or call on her knowledge, since she has become an indisputable reference for me. She is always careful and verifies facts and contexts by every route possible. The Renoir family, and Auguste himself, are very lucky that Barbara is so passionate about her subject, and I feel personally lucky to know her. I thank her from the bottom of my heart for this work of a lifetime – a magnificent success. I am very pleased that her book has been edited by the quality editors at Thames & Hudson, as it will remain a point of reference for many generations to come.” – Sophie Renoir (great-granddaughter of Auguste Renoir, granddaughter of his eldest son Pierre, and daughter of Renoir’s grandson Claude Renoir, Jr.), June 7, 2017

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984.

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as "Grand Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game," tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it " remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have." Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

New York Times Bestseller “Anyone who has ever lost themselves in Monet’s color-saturated gardens or swooned over Degas’s dancers will enjoy this revealing group portrait of the artists who founded the Impressionist movement. . . . For the armchair dilettante, as well as the art-history student, this is lively, required reading.” — People The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for their paintings. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? Sue Roe's colorful, lively, poignant, and superbly researched biography, The Private Lives of the Impressionists, follows an extraordinary group of artists into their Paris studios, down the rural lanes of Montmartre, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental change. Vivid and unforgettable, it casts a brilliant, revealing light on this unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty years and transformed the art world forever with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life.

Catherine Hewitt's richly told biography of Suzanne Valadon, the illegitimate daughter of a provincial linen maid who became famous as a model for the Impressionists and later as a painter in her own right. In the 1880s, Suzanne Valadon was considered the Impressionists’ most beautiful model. But behind her captivating façade lay a closely-guarded secret. Suzanne was born into poverty in rural France, before her mother fled the provinces, taking her to Montmartre. There, as a teenager Suzanne began posing for—and having affairs with—some of the age’s most renowned painters. Then Renoir caught her indulging in a passion she had been trying to conceal: the model was herself a talented artist. Some found her vibrant still lifes and frank portraits as shocking as her bohemian lifestyle. At eighteen, she gave birth to an illegitimate child, future painter Maurice Utrillo. But her friends Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas could see her skill. Rebellious and opinionated, she refused to be confined by tradition or gender, and in 1894, her work was accepted to the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, an extraordinary achievement for a working-class woman with no formal art training. Renoir’s Dancer tells the remarkable tale of an ambitious, headstrong woman fighting to find a professional voice in a male-dominated world.

"Published by the Clark Art Institute on the occasion of the exhibition Renoir: The Body, The Senses, presented at the Clark Art Institute from June 8 to September 22, 2019, and at the Kimbell Art Museum from October 27, 2019, to January 26, 2020"--Colophon.