A GIRL WITH A WATERING CAN

Pierre Auguste Renoir began his artistic career as a dish painter. While an art student he met a couple of fellow artists who would become famous in their own right: Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley. Through his friendship with Monet he would meet Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne.

A few years after returning from war service, due to rejections by the snooty Salon juries, Renoir and his artist friends banded together to exhibit their works. This was the first Impressionist exhibition. The first one didn't go as well as hoped...the term "Impressionist" resulted from critics calling the paintings "impressions" rather than completed paintings...but Renoir and his pals did eventually sell a few paintings along the way.

Renoir did tire of the Impressionist technique of painting and in the 1880s, changed his method to a more disciplined technique, his later works being influenced by the paintings of Velazquez, Titian and Raphael after traveling to Spain and Italy. However his Impressionist paintings will always be appreciated by us art lovers.

The painting below, with its colors and light of the impressionist palette, is part of the extensive French painting collection donated to the National Gallery of Art by Chester Dale.

A Girl with a Watering Can (1876)

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The photo in this blog post was taken by me during my visit in September, 2013.

BAL DU MOULIN DE LA GALETTE

Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876) by Pierre Auguste Renoir

Like many of his fellow Impressionist painters, many scenes Pierre Auguste Renoir painted were influenced from living and working in the Montmartre area of Paris. This painting, which hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of his most important early Impressionist works. Several of Renoir's friends appear in the painting which portrays Parisians enjoying themselves in this popular dance garden in Montmartre.

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The photo was taken by me during my visit to the Musée d'Orsay in May, 2006.

PIERRE BONNARD

Pierre Bonnard was a founding member of a group of artists called Les Nabis (Nabi means prophet in Hebrew), a short-lived group of Post-Impressionist artists in Paris in the 1890s. Although trained as a lawyer (the wishes of his father), Bonnard really wanted to be a painter and at age 21, he began studying at the Académie Julian in Paris; many of his fellow classmates would become members of Les Nabis. Known for his use of intense color, Bonnard's earlier works such as the top painting, Girl with a Straw Hat (1903), were still being influenced by Impressionist painters such as Renoir. During his lifetime Bonnard also contributed illustrations for many books and magazines, successfully published several series of lithographs and even designed set decorations for theater and ballet productions. Bonnard constantly showed his works in major art exhibitions not just in France, but throughout the world. In 1910, he made his first trip to the south of France; after making annual trips to the area, he permanently moved there in 1925. Bonnard would paint over 300 paintings, such as the bottom painting, View from the Artist's Studio, Le Cannet (1945).

These two paintings are why many art historians believe that Pierre Bonnard is considered one of the greatest colorist painters of the modern art.

These two masterpieces are part of the collection assembled by Mrs. Harry L. Bradley during the second half of the 20th century, beginning in 1950. Over the next twenty-five years she acquired over 400 works of art. The idea of gifting the collection to the Milwaukee Art Museum came after she and her husband noticed how much families enjoyed visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  They wanted the same enjoyment for their hometown museum even though other major U.S. museums tried to obtain the collection. In addition to the works of art, Mrs. Bradley gave the museum $1,000,000 to erect the Bradley Wing to house the collection. After the Bradley Wing opened in 1975 until her death in 1977, Mrs. Bradley came to the museum nearly every day to view her collection and greet museum visitors.

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This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 29, 2012. 
The photos were taken by me during my visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum.