The Career of Impressionistic Painter Auguste Renoir

Paintbrushes and paints
Photo by Andrian Valeanu on Unsplash

Dr. Mark Paskewitz is the vice president of clinical operations for the National Institute of Clinical Research in Los Angeles. In addition to his work, Dr. Mark Paskewitz enjoys the paintings of artists such as Auguste Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (better known simply as Auguste Renoir) was born in Limoges, France, in 1841. In his teens in Paris, he found work painting decorative vases and plates from templates. As he learned other forms of painting he became a student of the sculptor Louis-Denis Caillouette.

Renoir learned his craft by copying artworks in the Louvre and was admitted to the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At the school he met other students, such as Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissaro. Though he struggled to make ends meet at this time, Renoir, his friends, and another artist, Edgar Degas, presented a show in 1874.

A critic described their work as “impressions,” as opposed to conventionally finished works. The name stuck. Renoir’s work did not bring him financial success, but it did inspire the support of several patrons. Attracted by his bright colors and unique brushstrokes, the public gradually made him famous.

The artist’s favorite subjects were his growing family, as well as scenes at home and in the country. However, the physical labor of painting drained him as he dealt with rheumatism until his death in 1919.

In addition to influencing such greats as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Renoir left a living legacy. His son Jean was a filmmaker who was named the 12th-best movie director of all time - and the best in France - by Entertainment Weekly.

Da Vinci May Have Benefited from Being Cross-Eyed

Based in Southern California, Mark Paskewitz is a respected pharmaceutical development director who has assisted in managing clinical trials that produced novel medicines. Passionate about art through the centuries, Mark Paskewitz has a particular interest in the works of Renaissance masters such as El Greco and Leonardo da Vinci.

As reported in Live Science, researchers at the City University of London's Division of Optometry and Visual Sciences recently completed a study that postulates that da Vinci’s art was aided by his eye condition, strabismus, or crossed eyes. 

A condition in which both eyes cannot focus on the same point simultaneously, strabismus is often compensated for by the brain's suppression of vision in the "wandering" eye. What this results in is 2D "monocular" vision, which can amplify the ability of an artist to capture three dimensionality on a flat canvas. 

Associated with many visual artists from Pablo Picasso to Rembrandt van Rijn (based on self-portrait analysis), strabismus has been difficult to assess for da Vinci, as there are only a handful of confirmed self-portraits of the artist. By analyzing the pupil positions in other works of portraiture that may have used elements of the artist’s likeness, researchers discovered that the works seem to depict exotropia, the form of the condition in which one or both of the eyes are turned outwardly. The advantage of this condition for a painter would have been that the actual person or place depicted could have been continuously monitored while the other eye focused on the canvas.