Renoir's Tools and Techniques (Part I)

Renoir’s journey began as a porcelain painter utilizing glazes. Renoir's employer told the young craftsman that he was too good to continue painting on porcelain and should join an atelier to begin serious study. Renoir enrolled in Charles Gleyre’s atelier where he met Monet, Sisley, and Bazille, and discovered painting en plein air. They all painted together outdoors and petitioned the annual Salon for entry.

Accepted Salon works had been painted in the French Academic Method, a somewhat controlled, tight method. In the Salon of 1874, Louis LeRoy, a journalist and art critic for the French satirical newspaper Le Charivari scoffed at the works of the new avant-garde.  Upon seeing Monet's work, "Impression: Soleil  Levant" (Impression: Sunrise), LeRoy laughed and labeled the group "Impressionists" in a newspaper article meant to be derisive.  Hence, the beginning of the Impressionist Movement in France and the Modern era in art. 

Renoir continued to employ glazes in his paintings throughout his career. His paintings were built up almost entirely of transparent and semi-transparent paint in contrast to Monet who soaked the oil out of his paints creating a crumbly paint that created its own luminosity due to opacity and high-key tints.

Renoir would often execute a detailed drawing on his substrate in blue or red chalk. He then used a solvent and medium to lay in his first juicy washes in approximation of the final colors.  He may have used an earth red at times, likely to give scintillation to overlying greens and flesh tones. Renoir’s linen substrate was either white, pale yellow or pale grey. Often his canvas ground color has been described as a biscuit tone. During later periods he used a white substrate exclusively.

Renoir painted wet-n-wet in glazes, letting the painting dry and then reworking it (as did all of the Impressionists; they did not paint alla prima). Renoir mixed directly on the canvas, adjusting value and hue with colors next to one another on the color wheel. For instance, to lighten a red, he would add a yellow. To darken a red, he might add blue (not the complement green). Renoir’s medium was a fatty linseed oil and he would have used the fatty medium throughout his painting, adhering to the fat over lean principle.

At times, Renoir would pick up several colors from his palette on his brush and apply them to the canvas. We can see swirls of color as well as smoother passages in The Fisherman (1874).

The Fisherman, 1874

In the lower right of the painting, Renoir used viridian and alizarin swirled together to create the dark passage in the water. It's almost black but the alizarin adds depth and keeps the dark area from being a black hole in the canvas. Additionally, the area draws the eye, echoing the Golden Section

Detail of  The Fisherman with obvious swirling of colors to make the dark passage

I hope you enjoyed this important information  (alas, hard to come by) about Renoir. Enjoy and please comment.


In Renoir's Tool and Techniques (Part II), I will cover modern palette substitutes, mediums  and brushes.