Women in Renoir's Paintings

“For me, a painting must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty—yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more.” — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The female subject defined Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s prolific career. Every woman in his life—his wife, mistresses, friends, strangers, actresses, and society women—became his model, and took a variety of forms. Renoir’s women ranged from voluptuous, chaste, modern, and primitive—sometimes occupying seemingly mutually exclusive modes simultaneously. His famous figures influenced definitions of femininity in the emerging 20th century, with their styles, activities, and parasols indicated emerging modernity. The Renoir women are never the same, each new one showing growth in artistic style.