Renier studied in New York at the Art Students League, in Belgium under Victor Rousseau, in Paris at the academies Colarossi and Julien and the Ecole de la Grande Chaumi‚re, and in Rome at the American Academy. His early practical training was accomplished in the studios of Adolph A. Weinman and Atillio Piccirilli. He taught at the Yale School of Fine Arts from 1927 to 1941 and taught architecture for several years at New York University.
Renier was a specialist in architectural and garden sculpture. Among the major public commissions he undertook during the early 1930s were a series of panels for the Department of the Post Office Building in Washington and The Great Star of Texas, a decorative relief, 25 feet in diameter, designed for the State of Texas Building, Dallas. Two of his garden pieces are in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, and his marble Bather is in the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut. His large, allegorical figure, Speed, graced the lagoon in front of the Communications Building at the New York World's Fair in 1939.
Renier exhibited his work at the National Academy as early as 1914 but did not begin to show there on a regular basis until the late 1930s. He won the Academy's Morse Medal in 1962 for The Waves (cat. no. 47); the Watrous Medal in 1965 for Leggerezza (cat. no. S-7); and the D. C. French Medal in 1966 for Young Girl (cat. no. S-8). He was a member of the National Sculpture Society and the Architectural League of New York.
