Pierre-Auguste Renoir: The Friendly Impressionist
During his long life, Renoir made many loyal friends
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges in central France on 25th February 1841, the fourth of his parents’ five children. His father Leonard was a tailor; his mother, Marguerite, a seamstress. The family moved to Paris when Renoir was aged four so he grew up in the capital — at first in a run-down apartment in the courtyard of the Louvre, which was then still a royal palace.
The Renoir household was crowded and hardworking, but the boy had a happy childhood distinguished by the discovery that he had a beautiful singing voice. The composer Gounod proposed to arrange a complete musical education for him, with a place in the chorus of the Paris Opera. But even at 13, Renoir somehow felt that he was not “made for that sort of thing”. Instead, he took up another offer — he became an apprentice decorative painter in a small porcelain factory.
Auguste proved so skilful at the job that he was nicknamed Mr Rubens and was soon given the task of painting profiles of Marie Antoinette on the fine white cups. He earned a good living at his craft for five years, before the job of hand-painting was made obsolete by the invention of a mechanical stamping process. It was his first real contact with “the machine”, and turned him against…
