Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841, the son of a tailor, and the family moved to Paris when he was three. At thirteen he was apprenticed to a porcelain factory, where he painted designs on china. In 1862 he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre and met Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille. He exhibited at the Salon from 1864, and working outdoors beside Monet in the late 1860s he developed his mature Impressionist style.
He showed six paintings at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, and again in 1876 and 1877, but because he needed sales he soon went back to the Salon. In the 1870s his bright, warm touch won him portrait commissions from Parisian society, notably through Madame Charpentier. His favourite subjects were dancing couples, boating parties, children and, above all, women. After travelling to Algeria and Italy in 1881–82, he grew dissatisfied with Impressionism and for a time turned to firmer contours and sculpted forms.
In later life rheumatoid arthritis made painting painful. He moved to the warmer climate of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, bought the estate of Les Collettes in 1907, and kept on painting there to the end. In 1919 he went to Paris to see his portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier hanging in the Louvre. He died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on 3 December 1919, aged seventy-eight.