Renoir was renowned for his works with their vibrant light and color and the harmony of the lines he portrayed within his landscapes, and figure paintings. At the beginning of his prolific career he employed the Impressionist techniques, where detail was denied, and replaced with soft fusions between characters and their surroundings. While he moved away from this style in the middle of his career – known as his Ingres Period, where he concentrated on more definition like the conventional and traditional painters – he returned to the softness of his earlier style toward the end of his life.Renoir was greatly influenced by artists such as Rubens, Titian, Raphael, Eugène Delacroix and his contemporary and friend, Claude Monet (1840-1926). Alongside Monet, he became obsessed with painting en plein air and exploring the subject matter provided by the open countryside toward the late 1860s. He firmly believed that black did not produce a shadow, but that shadows were reflected color of the objects surrounding them.