<= Previous | February Issues Index | Next =>
Quotes of the Day for 25 February 2005 - Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France on this day in 1841. The son of a tailor, he went to work painting designs on dinnerware in a porcelain factory at age twelve, and was soon running to the Louvre on lunch breaks to copy the Rococo masters. From 1862 he studied at Le Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he met Claude Monet. These two, along with Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille, were the founders of Impressionism, but Renoir is the most popular of them based on print sales. Renoir veered away from Impressionism after traveling to Spain and Italy in 1881 to study Renaissance art, and his work gained in realism. Perhaps because of his production line experience in that porcelain factory, Renoir created several thousand paintings in his six-decade career. In his later years he was unable to hold a brush because of arthritis, so he had a brush strapped to his wrist so he could keep painting.

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

The only way to understand painting is to go and look at it. And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.

I feel sorry for men who are always running after women. What a job! On duty day and night: not a minute's respite. I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.
     - All from Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1841 - 1919

Would you like to see quotes like these in your mail tomorrow morning? Our 10,000 loyal subscribers hate to miss a day, perhaps you should sign up now! No cost or obligation, just be open to the enlightenment waiting for you among our 22,500+ quotes.