Frammenti di luce e di colore Una finestra sull'Impressionismo | Page 65

In fact, Renoir began to look for different
styles and separate from the impressio-
nist group, specially after his travels in
Algeria (1881) and, above all, Italy (1882):
here, Raphael’s paintings in particu-
lar caught his attention, and influenced
him the most. In 1880 he knew his future
wife, Aline Charigot, he will marry her in
1890, and he’ll have three children. In the
same year he got his right arm broken,
fact that forced him to paint with the
left one. In this period, he started using
bigger canvas, for example in the “Lun-
cheon of the Boating Party” (where the
wife Aline served as a model, she is the
woman on the left playing with the dog),
and he painted a lot of female nudes *.
In 1883 he exposed in London, Boston,
Berlin, and lived in Guernsey (one of the
English islands above France) and along
the French Riviera. During the late 80’s,
he returned to a more expressive style.
With the travel in Spain (1892) Goya and
Velázquez caught his inspiration *. The
same year, Renoir got arthritis. In 1907,
he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to
the Mediterranean coast, and continued
painting even with his bone disease. The
arthritis, however, forced him to chan-
ge his painting technique. He developed
progressive deformities in his hands and
ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring
him to change his painting technique. In
this period he even made some sculptu-
res, cooperating with Richard Guino. He
died in Cagnes in 1919.
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