Renoir was born in 1841 in Limoges and his works are characterized by his indestructible belief in the life-giving power of nature. The bright colours of its landscapes, the sensual grace of the images of women and young girls with her light laughter witness.

First, Renoir worked as a porcelain painter and studied at the Louvre of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. In 1862 he began studying at the École of des Beaux Arts to the end of the 60s under the influence of the Barbizon School of plein-air painting. As well as Claude Monet, he developed the Impressionism characteristic loose brush style, with the ever-changing in the light colours. In addition to the landscapes, also portraits emerged by his painter friends and his favorite model Lise Tréhot. In the summer of 1869 he made a series of paintings of the restaurant "La Grenoullière", where he frequently visited with Monet. These light-filled images illustrate particularly clearly his distinctive style of volatile brushstrokes and delicate, bright colours, which can hold the flickering of the air and the sparkle of the water.

Renoir also expressed again with muted tonality and denser brush dealing with works by Courbet and Delacroix. His late work demonstrates tremendous colour power and combined with graphic elements which can be anything, suspecting from his severe rheumatic disease, especially of the hands. With the help of a student of the sculptor Maillol created during this period some bronze sculptures.

The most important painter and printmaker of Impressionism died as an internationally recognized artist on 03.12.1919 in Cagnes-sur-Mer.

The style of Impressionism that emerged in French painting in 1870 owes its name to the Claude Monet's landscape 'Impression, Soleil Levant'. After initial refusal it began a true triumphant advance.

Such painters as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir and others created motifs from everyday life, urban and landscape scenes in a bright, natural light.

Impressionism can be seen as a reaction to the academic painting. The emphasis was not on content with its strict rules of painting structure, but on the object as it appears at any given moment, in an often random cut out. The reality was seen in its whole color variety in natural lighting. The studio painting was replaced by the open-air painting.

The brightening of the palette and the dissolution of firm contours was accompanied by a new way of handling with color. Often, the colors were no longer mixed on the palette but side by side on the canvas so that the final impression lies in the eye of the beholder with a certain distance. In "Pointillism", (with such painters as Georges Seurat or Paul Signac) this principle was carried to the extreme.

Outside France, Impressionism was taken up by such painters as Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth in Germany, and by James A. M. Whistler in the United States.

In sculpture, the impressionism expressed itself only conditionally. In the works of Auguste Rodin, who is considered one of the main representatives, you can see a resolution of the surfaces in which the play of light and shadow is included in the artistic expression. Degas and Renoir created sculptures as well.