Pierre-Auguste Renoir was the son of a poor tailor. His family moved to Paris in 1844, where he was trained as a porcelain painter between 1854 and 1858, gaining experience with the light, fresh colors that were to distinguish his Impressionist work. In 1859 he worked at a firm producing painted curtains. He studied painting formally in 1862-63 at the academy of the Swiss painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre in Paris. Renoir's early work was influenced by two French artists, Claude Monet in his treatment of light and the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix in his treatment of color. 1860 to 1864 he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, together with Monet, Sisley and Bazille. He painted with them in the Barbizon district and became a leading member of the group of Impressionists who met at the Café Guerbois, sharing with them an interest in catching the fleeting effect of light and atmosphere on color and form. Renoir exhibited with the group at the independent shows they organized in the 1870s as an alternative to the official annual Salon in Paris. Later, at Bougival and Argenteuil on the Seine during his frequent visits to where Monet lived, he worked out the main tenets of the Impressionist method with him. The two of them would often paint side by side, perfecting their techniques.

He met Aline Charigot, his favourite model, in 1880, married her in 1890, and had three sons. Renoir fully established his reputation with a solo exhibition held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris in 1883. In 1887 he completed a series of studies of a group of nude female figures known as "The Bathers". In the 1890s Renoir began to suffer from rheumatism, and from 1903 (by which time he was world-famous) he lived in the warmth of the south of France. The rheumatism eventually crippled him (by 1912 he was confined to a wheelchair), but he continued to paint until the end of his life, and in his last years he also took up sculpture, directing assistants (usually Richard Guino, a pupil of Maillol) to act as his hands. In 1894 he became the executor of a bequest of Impressionist paintings to the French government. His wife died in 1915. In 1919 he was honored with the hanging of one of his pictures in the Louvre. One of his sons was the popular film director Jean Renoir (1894-1979), who wrote a lively and touching biography (Renoir, My Father) in 1962.