Pierre-Auguste Renoir

As a boy Renoir painted designs in a porcelain factory. He later entered Gleyre's studio, where he met Monet and Sisley. He loved to paint crowds, pleasure and feminine beauty.

“A picture ought to be something likeable, joyous and pretty,” he said. Crippled by rheumatoid arthritis in old age, he is said to have kept painting with the brush strapped to his hand.