Caillebotte Cassatt Degas Manet Monet Morisot Pissarro Renoir

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A couple dances at an outdoor café in Bougival, a small town near Paris. Thanks to the recent invention of trains, people could easily leave Paris to spend a day in the country, boating on the Seine, picnicking or going dancing.

Poor but happy childhood
When Renoir was a boy, his large family lived in a tiny Paris apartment not far from the Tuileries Palace, the residence of King Louis Philippe of France and his queen. Renoir and his friends often played "cops and robbers" and other games, yelling and carrying on in the courtyard just below Queen Marie Amélie's window. Every now and then, she would throw a handful of sweets down to the boys, probably hoping they would quiet down for a bit!

The apartment was so small Renoir referred to it as a "pocket handkerchief." There was no space for him in the boys' bedroom so each night his father spread a mat for him on the tailor's bench in his workroom. Since paper was scarce, Renoir used his father's tailor's chalk to draw on the floor all over the apartment. His father got annoyed when his chalk disappeared but he thought his son's sketches were "not at all bad." Renoir was just thirteen years old when he got his first job as a porcelain painter's apprentice.

Swirling skirts
Renoir creates the impression of a moving, swirling skirt by blurring the edges of the dancer's petticoat. Compare her hem with the one Renoir painted in The Umbrellas on the following page. The sharply painted skirt looks still while the blurry one appears to be moving.

Painter of happiness
After struggling in poverty for years, Renoir finally achieved acclaim as an artist. But his suffering then took a new form. He developed a crippling arthritis. After years of getting slowly worse, he lost the ability to walk or even pick up a paintbrush. When he wanted to paint, someone would have to place a brush in his stiff hands. But in spite of all his personal hardships, Renoir remained all his life "the painter of happiness."

"I want my red to sound like a bell. If I don't manage it at first, I put in more red, and also other colors, until I've got it."
- Auguste Renoir