Pierre-Auguste Renoir Overview

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on 25 February 1841 in Limoges. He was the sixth child of Léonard Renoir (1799-1874) and Marguerite Merlet (1807-1896). In 1844 Renoir and his family moved to Paris where Léonard Renoir earned his living as a tailor.

In 1854 Renoir left school and begin his apprenticeship as a porcelain painter at the firm of Lévy freres. His precocious talent for painting would assure his career as a porcelain painter but the firm went bankrupt in 1858. After that Renoir dabbled in a number of different jobs but it seems that he may have decided to become a full-time painter around this date.