Girls at the Piano...

One of my favorite painters is Renoir...I love this painting!! "Girls at the Piano". 1892, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Pierre Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges in 1841, the son of working-class parents.He was apprenticed by his father at age 13 to a Parisian factory where porcelains were made. At an early age Renoir decided that painting was his true career. . He was an amiable and uncomplicated man, free of the disturbing tensions of his great contemporaries. As a beginner he was rebuked by his professor who accused him of "dabbling in paint". To which Renoir audaciously reply, "If it didn't amuse me to paint, I beg you to believe that I wouldn't do it."
Renoir's art differs from that of other Impressionists: it is not simply a reflection of the pleasant aspects of like, but rather a a triumph of an ideal of happiness and beauty, and a victory over distress. His paintings never reflected any of his periods of self-doubt or hardship. Instinctively he fixed on the happy aspects of the family things about him.

In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist's friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
In the last fifteen years of his life he was so crippled with arthritic pain he had to be carried about or in a wheelchair, with his brush strapped to his solidified hand. Renoir died in 1919.
In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on December 3.
"Above all Renoir's painting showed his great love of people and the world; and the result was one of the most festive arts ever created."
From the Pocket Library of Great Art