Renoir FROM THE PUBLISHER
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841. He was the sixth child in the family of Leonard Renoir and Marguerite Merlet. Three years later, in 1844, the Renoirs moved to Paris. In 1848, Auguste began attending a school run by the Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes. Renoir was lucky with the music teacher - it proved to be the composer Charles Gounod, who took the boy into the choir at the church of Saint-Eustache.
In 1854, the boy's parents took him from school and found a place for him in the Levy brothers' workshop, where he was to learn to paint porcelain. Renoir's younger brother Edmond had this to say:
"From what he drew in charcoal on the walls, they concluded that he had the ability for an artist's profession. The young apprentice set about mastering the craft seriously: at the end of the day, he armed himself with a piece of cardboard bigger than himself and headed for the free drawing courses. It went on like that for two to three years."
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