Artist: Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)
Title: Après le bain II (After the Bath)
Medium: Antique copper plate heliogravure engraving on Japon Imperial Paper hand pulled by Emile Fequet in Paris on December 15, 1919.
Edition: One of 100 examples on Japon Imperial Paper.
Publisher: Ambroise Vollard
Dimensions: Image Size 7 7/8 x 10 1/4 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 17 x 19 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir; was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau.” Pierre Auguste Renoir originally associated with the Impressionist movement. He was one of the central figures of the impressionist movement (a French art movement of the second half of the nineteenth century whose members sought in their works to represent the first impression of an object upon the viewer). His work is characterized by a richness of feeling and a warmth of response to the world and to the people in it. His early works were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid-1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women. Renoir was so passionate about painting that he even continued when he was old and suffering from severe arthritis. Renoir then painted with the brush tied to his wrists.. A prolific artist, he created several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir’s style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently reproduced works in the history of art. The single largest collection of his works—181 paintings in all—is at the Barnes Foundation, in Philadelphia.Renoir’s work seems always to be about pleasurable occasions, and reveals no great seriousness in his subjects.He was the father of actor Pierre Renoir (1885–1952), filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894–1979) and ceramic artist Claude Renoir (1901–1969). He was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir (1913–1993), son of Pierre.