TACOMA, WA.- Tacoma Art Museum presents a comprehensive collection of French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s etchings and lithographs created during the last three decades of his life. Drawn from a local private collection, this body of work constitutes Renoir's entire known graphic works. The public opening for Renoir as Printmaker: The Complete Works, 1878-1912 will be January 17, 2008—during FREE Third Thursday’s ArtWalk from 5 to 8 pm. The exhibition will remain on view through June 29, 2008.

This collection is generously and anonymously being lent by a local collector only to Tacoma Art Museum . The exhibition includes all twenty-five etchings and thirty-five lithographs Renoir created during his lifetime, as well as multiple states of many images. The exhibition is supplemented with a small selection of Renoir’s paintings, including Têtes de deux jeunes filles [also known as The Two Sisters], from Tacoma Art Museum 's collection.

“We are honored to have such a rich body of work on loan from a Northwest collector,” said Stephanie Stebich, Director of Tacoma Art Museum . “These prints are not often on public view and they offer a rare intimate view of the artist exploring and mastering a new medium. We’re looking forward to sharing these works with the community.”

The prints illuminate a lesser-known side of this much-loved artist’s work and provide insights into his thoughts about composition, light and shadow, and technique. A commission to create a frontispiece (a decorative illustration that faces the title page of a book) for an edition of Stefan Mallarmé’s poems inspired Renoir to begin extensively experimenting with printmaking in the late 1880s.

“Renoir and his fellow French impressionists welcomed the mid-nineteenth-century revival of printmaking as an art form,” said Margaret Bullock, Tacoma Art Museum Curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions, and curator of the Renoir exhibition. “It allowed them to pursue some of the same subjects they were exploring in their paintings. They used loose, expressive gestures; captured fleeting moments in time; revisited a motif at different seasons or times of day; and depicted scenes from everyday life through printmaking as much as through painting. Prints also appealed to the impressionists because they were inexpensive and made the artwork easily available to the general public.”

Renoir did not move exclusively to printmaking during this stage in his career. Many of his prints were related to his paintings, while others were unique works of art or original book illustrations. He turned to prints because the speed and ease with which he could create them helped him meet popular demand for his work in the later decades of his life after his reputation had been established. He continued working in this medium in part because his deteriorating health and eyesight made painting difficult.

During the last two decades of his life, Renoir suffered from rheumatism. Unable to move his hands freely, a brush would be strapped to his arm to allow him to paint. By 1911, he was permanently confined to a wheelchair. Eventually unable to paint or create prints, he began to experiment with sculptures around 1913 because another artist could help him execute the work. On December 3, 1919, Renoir died at his house in Cagne , France , at the age of seventy-eight.

Tacoma Art Museum organized the exhibition and is the only venue for this rarely seen body of work. Renoir as Printmaker: The Complete Works, 1878-1912 is generously sponsored by Bank of America.

Tacoma Art Museum connects people and builds community through art. The museum serves the diverse communities of the region through its collection, exhibitions, and learning programs, emphasizing art and artists from the Northwest. The museum’s five galleries display an array of major national shows, the best of Northwest art, creatively themed exhibitions, and historical retrospectives. In addition, there is an Education Wing for children, adults, and seniors with an art resource center, classroom, and studio for art making. Tacoma Art Museum is located in Tacoma ’s Museum District, near the Museum of Glass , the Washington State History Museum , and historic Union Station.