Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on February 25, 1841, to a family of modest origins, his father a tailor and his mother a textile worker. He spent his childhood in Paris where he attended elementary school at the Brothers of the Christian Schools, revealing an incredible talent for drawing as well as singing. This passion of his is mainly indulged by his father, who spends his little savings to buy useful drawing materials. In 1854, Renoir joined a porcelain manufactory, a typical activity in his hometown. The firm shortly thereafter, in 1858, declared bankruptcy and the artist found himself without a job, so he decided to strike out on his own and help his engraver brother. Renoir began attending courses at theÉcole de Dessin et d’Arts décoratifs, which made the desire to become a painter grow in him. In 1862 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the same time collaborated with the painter Marc Gabriel Gleyre, with whom, however, he did not share the same approach to painting. It was during these years that he met Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Fréderic Bazille. The common element between them is surely the same feeling of repulsion toward ateliers and toward classical academic technique. It is from this friendship and rejection for ateliers that the desire to paint en plein air, following the example of Charles-François Daubigny, was born in them. The group of artists consisting of Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Camille Pissarro went to live in a house in the country where Renoir produced numerous works such as Lisa with Umbrella (1867), in which he portrayed his faithful friend Lise Tréhot. Later, plagued by a very severe and burdensome economic situation, he finds refuge in the rue Visconti atelier of Bazille, his close friend. Another solid and important friendship was the one he formed with Monet, with whom he painted together several times, as in the case of the 1869 work La Grenouillère painted in his company.

With the advent of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he was called to enlist, thus abandoning painting for a time. Following the surrender of Sedan, in the same year he returned to Paris where he resumed his activity by moving back to the rive gauche. With his return home his economic situation worsens; his psychological situation is also unstable given the death of his close friend Bazille during the war. Despite the difficulties, Renoir continued to paint, coming closer and closer together with Monet to what is now recognized as Impressionism.nWith his membership in the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs , a society created by Pissarro to raise funds for the organization of exhibitions, the artist formalized his entry into the Impressionist group. Thanks to the income earned from the association, they put on their first exhibition on April 15, 1874, in the studio of photographer Nadar at 35 boulevard des Capucines. It was on this occasion that critic Louis Leroy gave the group the famous appellation "Impressionists," which perfectly describes their intent to capture the moment.

Critics are divided into those who admire the new style of painting and those who do not. Renoir is almost always described as a gifted painter, but despite this he almost never manages to sell his paintings, thus worsening his economic situation. To earn money he decides to organize together with the merchant Paul Durand Ruel and Berthe Morisot, an Impressionist painter, an auction at the Hôtel Drouot. Here, too, the painter fails to sell what he would like, and is forced to sell off works in order to scrape together some money. Fortunately, the auction is also attended by Victor Chocquet, a customs official, who, looking at Renoir’s paintings, becomes passionate about them and decides to support him financially, commissioning eleven paintings from him. With the money he earned he bought a house in Montmartre, thus beginning his economic ascent. He became known throughout Paris for his portraits, and his works began to hang in the most important bourgeois salons. In addition to portrait painting he remained associated with en plein air painting and in 1876 painted Bal au moulin de la Galette, one of his best-known and most popular paintings.

By the end of the 1870s the Impressionist group gradually split, and the painter was accused by his peers of selling out his paintings only for fame and money. With the movement’s breakup, a desire to travel grew in him: so he visited Algiers in 1880 and Italy in 1882. In Italy he studied the Renaissance masters, being strongly influenced by Raphael Sanzio and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and his painting style from this point on changed and the aigre or ingresque period was inaugurated, as influenced by Ingres. Beginning in Venice he began his tour to descend slowly to the south, visiting cities such as Padua, Florence, Rome, Urbino and Naples, arriving as far as Palermo. Following his visit to our country he declares, “The Italians have no merit in having created great works in painting. It was enough for them to look around. Italian streets are full of pagan gods and biblical characters. Every woman nursing a child is a Madonna by Raphael.”

By the last period of his life his fame was established and he was regarded as one of the most important painters of France and Europe. In 1905 the French state, out of gratitude, decides to award him the Legion of Honor. With advancing age he was struck by rheumatoid arthritis, which paralyzed his legs. The course of his illness is spent at his new seaside home in southern France, Cagnes-sur-mer. There he died on December 3, 1919.