Visit the rooftops

Charles Paul Renouard [1845, Cour-Cheverny, France - 1924, Paris, France), was a French printmaker, draughtsman, illustrator and painter. 

Renouard, a son of a modest shoemaker, went to Paris at the age of 14 to find a work. In 1868, while employed as a house painter, some of his sketches and drawings hung on the walls of the courtyard at the Fine Arts School of Paris were noticed by Isidore Alexandre Augustin Pils, who invited him to work in his studio. Following their collaboration on the interior decor at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, Renouard, in 1875, singly undertook the frescoes on the vaulting above the grand staircase. Thus began a brilliant career. The increasing production of magazines and publications printed during this period offered a vast range of possibilities for illustration work. From 1875 to 1880, Paul Renouard did work for the magazines L'Art, L'Illustration, and Paris Illustré. Renouard first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877.

In 1884, he was employed as a drawer for the Graphic of London. He obtained the Gold Medal at the World Fair in 1889 and 1900, and worked as a professor at the Decorative Arts School where he befriended the painters Jean-Joseph Weerts and Edgar Degas. 

Renouard illustrated the great events of his time: the trial of Dreyfus and Zola, the Queen of England's Jubilee, Congress sessions, the world fairs and the First World War. We owe him a number of portraits of the most divers people, ranging from heads of state to dockers on the Thames. He paid frequent visits to the Opera to observe and draw dancers, one of his favorite themes. He was also a virtuoso in his studies of animals. 

His artworks can be seen in several museums in Paris, Brussels and San Francisco. A collection of Renouard's prints formed by the Japanese art dealer Tadamasa Hayashi, who organised the exhibition of the artist in Paris in 1894, is in Tokyo National Museum.