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A lasting impression
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TELEVISION BBC documentary on Impressionist painter Renoir on January 19
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One of the leading lights of the Impressionist era, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a prolific artist. In a long and illustrious career that spanned over five decades, he painted thousands of joyfully vibrant canvases.
In his final years, even when he was crippled by muscular rheumatism, the French master found ways of being one with his art. When it became too painful to even hold a brush in his hand, he navigated towards sculpture; with the help of two young sculptors with whom he communicated with exceptional facility he created several works of beauty. Renoir never gave up painting though. On the last day of his life too he painted holding the brush between his twisted fingers.
Born in 1841 to a tailor father and seamstress mother, Renoir was gifted with a beautiful voice. However, instead of music, he chose to enter the world of art at the age of 13, by becoming an apprentice decorative painter in a porcelain factory. During lunch time, he would visit the art galleries of Louvre to be inspired by the likes of Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Eugene Delacroix. In 1862, he joined the studio of Charles Gleyre as student and met Claude Monet, with whom he enjoyed a long and fruitful friendship.
Renoir’s best paintings are remembered for featuring extraordinarily effervescent portraits, splendid nudes, vibrant landscapes, lively sea-scapes, and colourful still lifes. His outdoor paintings caught the spirit of flashing and flickering light, and portrayed dash, joyfulness and laughter of holidaying men and women. Through these paintings, Renoir became one of the most representative figures of the Impressionist movement. “The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away,” he would say. “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.”
“Dance At The Moulin De La Galette” has often been hailed as the most beautiful picture of the 19th Century. Painted by Renoir in 1876, it depicts a lively Sunday afternoon at a dance hall in Montmartre. In this painting, well-dressed men and women are seen enjoying themselves in each other’s company; in the background dancing couples are engaged in matching steps while the foreground has people seated on open-air furniture gossiping and drinking.
In its series titled ‘Private Life Of A Masterpiece’, a BBC documentary looks at this painting closely revealing not only the celebratory aspects of Renoir’s painting but also tracing the bloody and turbulent times which Paris was still recovering from, in the mid-1870s.
The engrossing tale of “Dance At The Moulin De La Galette” can be watched on BBC World at 5.40 p.m. on January 19; the programme will be repeated at 3.40 p.m. and 10.40 p.m. on January 20.
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