Grosset & Dunlap | 1968 | English | 124 pages | PDF | 21.4 MB

One of the greatest of the French painters associated with the Impressionists, Renoir was more influenced than they were by the earlier masters—above all by Rubens, the Venetians, Watteau and Boucher. The work of all these artists is imbued with the same frank delight in the senses that intoxicates us in Renoir's paintings of crowded cafe scenes, riverside landscapes, pretty girls in their colourful clothes, and children. When depicting such subjects Renoir used the technique of the Impressionists (especially of his friend Monet) to convey, with shimmering colour and lightness of touch, the pulsating gaiety of France in the 1870s. And yet it was his attachment to the art of the past that eventually led him to forsake Impressionism for a more classical style, characterized by clear modelling and carefuhy planned compositions. In the great nudes of his later years Renoir, without sacrificing the radiant sensuousness of his earlier works, certainly achieved the ' simplicity and grandeur' that (in his own words) he had always admired in the old masters