Renoir

How the lush moods and easy conviviality of the Rococo permeated Renoir s sensual paintings More than any other Impressionist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir defined the treatment of the human figure for his generation, while also portraying the emergent Parisian bourgeois way of life. In this volume, Renoir s painting After the Luncheon, which depicts three bourgeois figures enjoying tea, liquor and cigarettes after a meal in a restaurant, serves as the jumping-off point for a far-reaching examination of an important source of inspiration for the painter throughout his life: the Rococo. Considered trivial after the French Revolution, this style of painting, developed over the course of the 18th century, was typified by frivolous gatherings of beautiful, upper-class subjects in pastoral settings and lascivious boudoir scenes. The Rococo style experienced a renaissance in the 19th century and was widely celebrated during Renoir s lifetime. Published on the occasion of the Städel Museum s major exhibition, this beautiful clothbound volume, containing over 300 color images, explores Renoir s multifaceted connection to a once reviled tradition through illuminating juxtapositions of his art with the 18th-century works of such renowned masters as Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and others. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 1919) was a founder of the style that became known as Impressionism, and one of the movement's most prolific members. Described by Herbert Read as the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau, Renoir was a connoisseur and champion of feminine beauty. Surviving most of his contemporaries, Renoir lived to see his paintings hung at the Louvre alongside the Old Masters he so revered.