Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "I want a red to be sonorous - to sound, like a bell.."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a prominent French painter and a leading figure 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".

Known for his distinctive soft brushwork, vibrant colors, and focus on celebrating beauty and sensuality, he captured intimate and joyful scenes of everyday life.

• "You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous".

• "You know how I feel painting a skin which won't take the light well.. .Madame de Bonnieres was as pale as wax, you may be sure.. ..and her hands.. ..one of the most charming women it is possible to meet, and she doesn't want to have any colour in her cheeks!".

• "I want a red to be sonorous - to sound, like a bell.. ..there are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver' 1908".

• "[I]n spite of the apparent simplicity of the laws... the works of nature are infinitely varied... [O]ur French art... is perishing because of regularity, dryness, and the mania of false perfection... it is useful to react promptly against the mortal doctrines which threaten to annihilate it... (1884)".

• "I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting... I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters... Raphael didn't work out-of-doors, but he studied the sunlight all the same".