Renoir

Renoir would have been grateful for the thoroughness with which his new biographer Barbara Ehrlich White has peeled away the myths and the lies first disseminated by his son Jean Renoir in an early hagiography of his father. Drawing on hundreds of unpublished letters, Renoir: An Intimate Biography reveals how the poor man fought back for so long against illness, and created an entire fantastical world of overflowing nudes or near-nudes as a form of consolation for his creeping physical decrepitude. The Renoir portrayed here is a generous, cheerful man but also a furtive and sometimes duplicitous one, a painter of genius who often churned out hackwork, a loving husband who constantly worried his wife would find out about the systematic lies he'd been telling her for years. It's a Renoir scarcely hinted at in the sunny swirl of his paintings - and all the more fascinating for that. White's scholarly biography is the result of '56 years of professional concentration on Renoir's paintings, character and personality.' The research is here, and it's impressive. We learn about the Impressionists with whom Renoir traveled and the official Salon against which they sometimes rebelled. Manet, Monet, C�zanne and Pissarro all make appearances, as does the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who created a market for these painters. Along the way, we also learn a great deal about 19th�century French society and mores. A well-rounded view of the artist's personal and professional life... White's readable, intriguing study sheds new light on misconceptions regarding Renoir's personality. Readers with prior knowledge of the artist will love to learn more, while those interested in the impressionists will enjoy peeking into the lives of artists such as Monet, C�zanne, and others. Scholars of Renoir will be indebted to White for assembling so many new letters that shed fresh light on the texture of Renoir's family life, friendships and daily routines...White's diligent work does reveal the 'manipulative personality' of her subject more candidly than ever before, laying bare both his contradictions and the release he found from them in the illusions of painting. In this new biography, White extends her research far beyond her earlier work, Renoir: His Life, Art and Letters... White delves into Renoir's complicated and contradictory personality, largely by looking at his relationships with key women, noting repeatedly that his warm and happy domestic scenes were at odds with a duplicitous, secretive nature and a stormy marriage. White dismisses long-held allegations of misogyny and anti-Semitism, concluding that Renoir is an inspiring, heroic figure and, on occasion, an amazingly gifted portrayer of hedonism and sensuality... Recommended.