Philadephia Museum of Art: The Last Renoir

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was first established in 1928. The museum is on higher ground because the land that it is on was once a reservoir that supplied drinking water to the city. In later years, the reservoir became polluted due to the industrial factories that had opened during the Industrial Revolution, so they drained the reservoir and build this fabulous museum. The museum’s architectural design was based upon ancient Rome and Greece’s buildings like the pantheon and the aqueduct. I knew that the building had to be based upon ancient Greek and Roman architecture because of the ionic columns in the buildings exterior and interior. The statue of the Greek and Roman Goddess Diana also symbolized that they cherished Greek and Roman culture. The architecture is something to marvel at, but this summer I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the Last Renoir exhibition.
The Last Renoir is an exhibition that showcases Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s last three decades worth of artwork. The exhibition has most of the artwork, but it may be short one or two paintings or sculptures. The museum’s exhibition pamphlet shows a picture of Gabrielle Renard, who is his children’s nanny and their long time friend because she is Renoir’s wife’s cousin. This showcase of Renoir’s artwork taught me that his artwork influenced many other artists during his time and after his time. One of those people was Picasso. Picasso was upset that he did not get the chance to meet Renoir, so he attempted to create his own version of Renoir’s girls. Although it was still a little bit off, Picasso did learn a new way to paint the same picture. The last three decades of his life, Renoir started to stray away from his original paintings of impressionism and started painting pictures with nudes and paintings that depicts the life of his family and his friends’ families. One of my favorites is his two self portraits and the two photos with Gabrielle in it. (One was the side painting of Gabrielle and the other was Gabrielle with Jean or his elder son.) I took about one hour to two hours in the exhibition rooms because I want to learn more about this artist’s work, life and family. Visiting this museum is a wonderful opportunity to understand a once famous artist that I have rarely heard about.
Not only did I see the Last Renoir, but I took a public tour to the European Art 1500 to 1850. This collection of art is very full of rich culture and history. There is just so much to learn and so much to see because there are Knights and their weapons and there are paintings and furniture from that time period in different countries. Some of those countries include the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Each country had its own unqiue form of art. For example, England has a room with furniture and paintings, and sculptures from the house of William Penn. They moved the entire room to the museum for people to see a section of an old English home. From that room we can infer that the owner is pretty wealthy by looking at the fireplace and its design and by looking at the painting of him and his wife. His wife was wearing a very long and puffy dress that had a very vibrant color. We can infer that the dress was probably made from a very expensive material like silk. That room also had a couch from that time period and it was the original. That couch was made by a famous designer that wrote a book with his designs and his designs travelled to most of Europe and landed in the colonies. That would be the reason that in America, we would have a similar couch.
This museum is very unique and the museum price for general admission is free on the first Sunday of every month and they have a very big collection of art. It is a place that I intend to visit again when a new travelling exhibition arrives.