Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Painted porcelain as a boy, then dappled light on skin for the rest of a very long career.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges in 1841 and began as a porcelain painter, which taught him a lightness of touch he never lost. He was central to Impressionism through the 1870s — Bal du moulin de la Galette, Luncheon of the Boating Party — then broke with it after a trip to Italy in 1881, tightening his drawing under the influence of Raphael and Ingres before loosening again into the warm, red-toned bathers of his last decades, painted at Cagnes with brushes strapped to hands crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. He died in 1919.
Renoir is among the most forged artists in existence and also among the most reproduced, and the two problems compound each other. The Wildenstein Plattner Institute catalogue raisonne is the reference for paintings, and expert opinion is normally required. The late work is a very large body and is valued quite differently from the Impressionist decade. Provenance across 1933 to 1945 requires checking for pictures that passed through European collections. Bronzes made in collaboration with Richard Guino are a distinct and complicated category, with lifetime and posthumous casts.
If you own a work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.