Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919 French)

Perhaps the best-loved of all the Impressionists, for his subjects-flowers, children, above all lovely women-have instant appeal, and he communicated the joy he took in them with great directness. His early works were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid-1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women.

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