- Some wears on dust jacket with edges torn, please see the video for details.
A thing of beauty needs no commentary: Renoir himself made this remark and it applies to no other painting so well as his own. Sufficient unto themselves, his pictures call for no explanation. If ever an artist stood aloof from theories and ideas, that artist was Renoir. With his instinctive distrust of abstractions, he came to regard his art as a form of manual labor. "Painting is not a matter of dreaming up or being inspired. It's a handicraft first of all and a good craftsman is wanted to do it well," was his opinion. All his life he made a point of doing a good job of it, turning out a well-painted picture, with a texture as fine and full-bodied as he could make it. In his last years he grew increasingly concerned with evolving methods of work that would keep his colors fresh and unfading. One of the original members of the Impressionist, Auguste Renoir (1841- 1919) invented the so-called rainbow palette and made a thoroughgoing use of both broken and blended color, recording the beauties of the visible world with a fresh eye. From his early landscapes and figure studies steeped in sunlight and shimmering colors, he went on to paint the magnificent nudes of his final period, an achievement unique in the history of modern art, showing him not only as a colorist but as a master of form. Renoir has been aptly described as the painter of happiness. His simplicity and sincerity were as genuine as Corot's, and they are the stuff of his greatness, both as a man and an artist. He rejoiced in being alive and painting was his way of expressing his love of life.
