With the arrival of the railway, the banks of the Seine beyond Paris became a popular resort for city workers. le Grenouillere at Croissy-sur-Seine was a restaurant built from several boats roped together, providing a dance floor in the evenings. This was the destination of Pierre Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet one day in 1869, when the two young friends set up their easels together en plein air and initiated the breakthrough to Impressionism.
By 1881, the year he turned forty and began traveling around Europe and North Africa, Renoir knew it was time for a reassessment. He decided that colour was to be the servant not the master, and that he would attempt to express from more carefully by tonal relationships. Not that he altered his palette; Renoir kept to the bright colours he had always favoured. In his later works, Renoir's experimentation brought an outpouring of monumental nudes and sensual young women with luminescent skin. Uncompromisingly, Renoir had always painted what pleased him and, since his days of decorating fans in the style of Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher, his immense skill and the ability to convey charm remained entirely undiminished.
In 1919, he died of heart attack in Cagnessur-Mer.
