Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French painter and leading figure in the Impressionist movement. Renoir applied pigment with lively brushstrokes that effectively captured flickering light and atmosphere, as seen in his Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876). “For me, a picture must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more,” he once reflected. Born on February 25, 1841 in Limoges, France, Renoir studied at the École des Beaux-Arts before meeting Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. He participated in the first and second Impressionist exhibitions in 1874 and 1876, which despite receiving harsh reviews achieved the goal of...