Splashing figure' by Pierre Auguste Renoir. The young Renoir struggled with his family’s financial circumstances so he left music school and started out as an apprentice at a porcelain factory. While he studied art in Paris, he befriended the young impressionist painters: Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley. In the 1870s, Renoir became one of the leading painters in the Impressionism movement. His lively paintings mostly celebrated the beauty of feminine sensuality.