
Beloved Impressionist, influential master or self-indulgent fantasist? You decide.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir is known and loved for his impressionist paintings of Paris. These paintings count among the world’s favourites. Renoir, however, grew tired of this style and changed course. This film, based on the collection of 181 Renoirs at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia,– examines the direction he then took and why it provokes such extreme reactions right up to today. Some claim they are repulsed by Renoir’s later works and some claim they are seduced. What may surprise many is that among the many artists who sought Renoir’s new works out and were clearly highly influenced by them were the two giants of the 20th century – Picasso and Matisse.
DirectorPhil Grabsky
WriterStephen Baysted

Part of
Includes: Leonardo: From the National Gallery, London, Manet: Portraying Life, Munch 150, Vermeer and Music, Matisse, Girl with a Pearl Earring: And Other Treasures from the Mauritshuis, Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing, The Impressionists: And the Man Who Made Them, Goya: Visions of Flesh and Blood, Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, Renoir: Reviled and Revered, The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch, I, Claude Monet, The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism, Michelangelo: Love and Death, Canaletto & the Art of Venice, David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts, Cézanne: Portraits of a Life, Degas: Passion for Perfection, Rembrandt: From the National Gallery, London and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Young Picasso, Van Gogh & Japan, Leonardo: The Works, Lucian Freud: A Self Portrait, Easter in Art, Frida Kahlo, Sunflowers, Raphael Revealed, The Danish Collector: Delacroix to Gauguin, Pissarro: Father of Impressionism, Hopper: An American Love Story, Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman, Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition, Tokyo Stories, Klimt & The Kiss, John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger, My National Gallery, London, Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, Dawn of Impressionism: Paris 1874