Renoir

Renoir started out as a porcelain painter, decorating plates and vases in a Paris workshop as a boy, and never lost the idea that a painting should be a pleasure to live with. That is why Renoir wall art works in rooms people actually use. Everything here is printed from the paintings themselves, framed or on canvas, and made to order in our shop in the USA.

What We Carry

Six paintings from his best twenty years. La Grenouillère (1869), painted on the Seine beside Monet, the two working the same view, in what historians count as one of the moments Impressionism began. Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876), the Sunday crowd in a Montmartre dance garden, now in the Musée d'Orsay. A Girl with a Watering Can, from the same year, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–81), his friends on a restaurant balcony at Chatou, with Aline Charigot, later his wife, at the front holding her little dog. Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 1881, at the Art Institute of Chicago. And Young Girls at the Piano (1892), the version the French state bought for its national collection.

Choosing For The Room

The crowd scenes — the Moulin de la Galette, the Boating Party, La Grenouillère — are warm and social, and belong where people gather: a dining room, a kitchen, a family room. The portraits are quieter. A Girl with a Watering Can and Two Sisters are the two most often chosen for a girl's room or a nursery, and Young Girls at the Piano has an obvious home beside a piano or in a music teacher's studio.

Renoir groups easily because his palette barely changes — warm skin, blue shadow, a lot of white. Two portraits side by side work; so does a big gathering with a portrait either side.

Framed Or Canvas

Most of these come both framed and on canvas. Framed prints come in four frame colors — Barnwood, Charcoal, Black, and Walnut — with an easel back, so the smaller sizes can stand on a shelf as well as hang. Canvas is a 1-inch gallery wrap that hangs without nails or tools, with a floating frame as the upgrade for a more finished edge. Everything is printed and finished to order in our family-owned shop in the USA.

A Gift Note

Luncheon of the Boating Party is the one for a couple: a long lunch with friends is what most people hope married life looks like, and Renoir did marry the woman with the dog. For somebody who already owns the Boating Party, La Grenouillère is the earlier, looser Renoir that few people have on a wall.