Jean renoir louise corbin essay

Renoir, in fact, met one of his best patrons, the banker Paul Berard, at Mme Charpentier’s home. They became very close—Renoir painted all of his children ( 61.101.15) and regularly visited the Berards’ country house in Wargemont, where he explored other genres such as seascapes ( 56.135.7) and luxuriant still lifes ( 61.101.12 ).

Renoir made five versions of Two Young Girls at the Piano for the Minister of Fine Arts to choose from; the version in the Metropolitan’s Robert Lehman Collection is one of the finest ( 1975.1.201 ). The subject of girls at a piano recalls eighteenth-century French genre scenes, especially those of Fragonard.

Renoir persisted in his cinematic pursuits until the late sixties, when, after the completion of The Little Theater of Jean Renoir, a collection of three short films, he decided to dedicate himself solely to writing, leaving the future of the medium to those who looked to him in reverence.

He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, nevertheless he ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877. From the 1880s until well into the twentieth century, he developed a monumental, classically inspired style that influenced such avant-garde giants as Pablo Picasso.