Pierre-Auguste Renoir, known as Auguste Renoir, is one of the most famous French painters. A full member of the Impressionist group, he evolved in the 1880s towards a more realistic style under the influence of Raphael. Painter of nudes, portraits, landscapes, marines, still lifes and genre scenes, pastel painter, engraver, lithographer, sculptor and draftsman. More interested in portrait painting and the female nude than in landscapes, he developed an original way of painting, which transcended his early influences (Fragonard, Courbet, Alfred Dehodencq, Monet, then Italian fresco). Despite crippling rheumatism that he managed to circumvent by attaching brushes to his wrists during the last seven years of his life, Renoir, the French artist who left more than 4000 paintings to posterity, worked tirelessly, meeting with great public success. Nothing stopped him: in 1880 he broke his right arm, but did not give up and used his left arm. He then gradually distinguished himself from the impressionist painters by his spirit of independence, forging a more personal style, using a fatter and thicker impasto.