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WORK TITLE: Renoir
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/20/1936
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 20, 1936.
EDUCATION:Holds a Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Art historian, writer, and educator. Tufts University, Medford, MA, lecturer, 1965-2002, adjunct professor emeritus of art history. Associate producer and script writer for documentary on Renoir, 1973.
AWARDS:Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement, for television documentary on Renoir; Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, French Minister of Culture and Communication, 2014. Recipient of numerous grants and other awards.
WRITINGS
Also, editor of Impressionism in Perspective, Prentice-Hall, 1978.
SIDELIGHTS
Barbara Ehrlich White is an art historian, educator, and writer. From 1965 to 2002, she served as a lecturer at Tufts University and continues to hold the title of adjunct professor emeritus at the school. White’s research and writing focuses on impressionist painters and particularly on Auguste Renoir. In 1984, she released Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters.
Impressionists Side by Side
In Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, White argues that the Impressionism’s origins lie in the relationship between Renoir and Claude Monet. She also highlights the relationships of Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne and Camille Pissarro, and Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot.
“White’s fascinating commentary is accompanied by a wealth of rarely seen photographs and artworks,” noted Donna Seaman in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly reviewer described Impressionists Side by Side as a “revelatory, gorgeously illustrated study.”
Renoir
White chronicles the life of the celebrated French painter in Renoir: An Intimate Biography. She tells of his early life, his art education, his relationship with art critics, his romances, and the difficulty he experienced toward the end of his life.
A Kirkus Reviews writer described Renoir as “ideal for readers seeking to delve deeply into Renoir’s personality; those seeking critical assessments of the individual works should look elsewhere.” “White’s research is exhaustive, her enthusiasm is infectious, and her style is unaffected, ensuring that this touching biography will enjoy a broad readership,” asserted a contributor to Publishers Weekly. Rebecca Kluberdanz, reviewer in Library Journal, commented: “White’s readable, intriguing study sheds new light on misconceptions regarding Renoir’s personality.” An Internet Bookwatch critic called the book “an extraordinarily well written … and presented biography study that will prove to be a critically important addition to both community and academic library collections.” Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Steve Donoghue remarked: “Barbara Ehrlich White’s earlier book was already an invaluable companion and counterweight to the son’s memoir; Renoir: An Intimate Biography is far beyond that earlier volume, both in the reach of its scholarship and in the insight of its understanding of Renoir’s work in all its stages of development.” Jackie Wullschlager, contributor to the Financial Times Online, opined: “This documentary life, based on thousands of letters, many unpublished, which she has collected since 1961, is the most personal account of any Impressionist ever written. It engages with Renoir from a domestic rather than art historical perspective, bringing to quotidian life the stick-thin, wiry, energetic painter, pipe in mouth.” However, Wullschlager concluded: “Renoir was complex, subtle, elegant and talked down to no one. You can find him in these pages, but with its treasure trove of primary sources, this book could have been so much better.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 1996, Donna Seaman, review of Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, p. 471.
Christian Science Monitor, December 28, 2017, Steve Donoghue, review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography.
Internet Bookwatch, February, 2018, review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography.
Library Journal, January 1, 2018, Rebecca Kluberdanz, “Renoir Reading,” review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography, p. 104.
Morning Edition, October 26, 2017, Susan Stamberg, “Guess Who Renoir Was In Love With In ‘Luncheon Of The Boating Party’,” author interview.
Publishers Weekly, August 5, 1996, review of Impressionists Side by Side, p. 423; August 7, 2017, review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography, p. 62.
Reference & Research Book News, November, 2010, review of Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters.
ONLINE
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com (October 6, 2017), Jackie Wullschlager, review of Renoir: An Intimate Biography.
Thames & Hudson Website, https://thamesandhudson.com/ (May 8, 2018), author profile.
Barbara Ehrlich White, Ph.D., lectured on art history at Tufts University from 1965–2002. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Art History at Tufts University. She wrote Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, published in 1984, which is still in print and has sold 125,000 copies. It is in 1,285 libraries in 18 countries and the New York Times chose it as one of the two best art books of 1984. White is the author of Knopf’s Impressionists Side By Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, and numerous journal articles. She also edited Prentice-Hall's Impressionism in Perspective in 1978. Her 2017 Renoir: An Intimate Biography is based on her collection of 3,000 letters by, to, and about Renoir; the biography quotes 1,100 letters of which 452 are unpublished. In the course of her career, she won many grants and awards. In 2014, the French Minister of Culture and Communication awarded her Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Art and Literature). She lectures about Renoir and Impressionism. In 1973 she was Associate Producer and Script Writer of an educational television documentary on Renoir for public television which won an Emmy for Outstanding Program Achievement.
Barbara Ehrlich White
Barbara Ehrlich White was a member of the Tufts University faculty from 1965–2002, where she lectured on art history. In addition to Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, first published in 1984, White is the author of Abrams's Impressionists Side By Side and numerous journal articles. In the course of her career, she won numerous grants and awards, and wrote several television scripts on Renoir, one of which won an Emmy.
Barbara Ehrlich White is Adjunct Professor Emerita of Art History, Tufts University, Massachusetts. Her Renoir: His Life, Art and Letters (Abrams, 1984) has sold over 125,000 copies. She is also the author of Impressionism in Perspective (Prentice-Hall, 1978) and Impressionists Side by Side (Knopf, 1996). She was encouraged to write the biography of the artist by Renoir’s family, and her receipt of the prestigious French honour, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, followed recommendation by the artist’s great-granddaughter, Sophie Renoir.
QUOTED: "Ideal for readers seeking to delve deeply into Renoir's personality; those seeking critical assessments of the individual works should look elsewhere."
White, Barbara Ehrlich: RENOIR
Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
White, Barbara Ehrlich RENOIR Thames & Hudson (Adult Nonfiction) $39.95 10, 17 ISBN: 978-0-500-23957-5
An in-depth biography of the French impressionist painter.White (Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, 1996, etc.) is one of the leading authorities on the life and work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), "one of the greatest and most creative artists who ever lived." Here, the author offers an "intimate" look into his life, a narrative fueled by her amassing a cache of more than 3,000 letters. Many are from the families of Renoir's illegitimate daughter, Jeanne, and his three sons, including the great film director Jean (whose own biography of his father White calls "historical fiction"), as well as from fellow artists. They shed particular light on his relationships with key women in his life, especially his wife, female models, and fellow artist Berthe Morisot. In workmanlike prose, White moves forward in seven chronological sections, each representing specific phases of Renoir's career. Throughout, the author presents Renoir as an "inspiring and heroic individual who overcame daunting obstacles." In his early years, he experienced great poverty; when he finally began to find success, he became afflicted with paralyzing rheumatoid arthritis, which turned his fingers and hands into gnarled fists. He would have a brush tied between his fingers so he could continue to paint and smoke his beloved cigarettes, both of which he did relentlessly. Renoir created 4,019 paintings and hundreds of pastels and drawings. He was "complex, maddeningly ambivalent, yet endearing," but he could also be "secretive, shrewd and even sneaky." Though the writing is often dry, White does a fine job of tracing the phases of his career. His work--"permeated with the freedom and joie de vivre of the Impressionists, fused with a classical search for balanced compositions and form"--inspired many painters, including Matisse and Picasso (they almost met). Ideal for readers seeking to delve deeply into Renoir's personality; those seeking critical assessments of the individual works should look elsewhere.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"White, Barbara Ehrlich: RENOIR." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572481/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9f333ae. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572481
QUOTED: "White's research is exhaustive, her enthusiasm is infectious, and her style is unaffected, ensuring that this touching biography will enjoy a broad readership."
Renoir: An Intimate Biography
Publishers Weekly. 264.32 (Aug. 7, 2017): p62+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Renoir: An Intimate Biography
Barbara Ehrlich White. Thames & Hudson, $39.95 (465p) ISBN 978-0-500-23957-5
White (Renoir: His Life, Art and Letters) delivers a moving biography of French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), sourced from thousands of letters and hundreds of previously unpublished writings by the artist, his family, and his friends, including many first-generation impressionists. Renoir got his start studying art in the studio of Swiss painter Charles Gleyre at age 21, which experience placed him in the orbit of Manet, Monet, and Degas, with whom he exhibited in their early independent exhibitions. Still, his art was often ridiculed by the critics, and he lived in abject poverty into his mid40s. By the 1880s, the public had gradually warmed to the impressionistic style. Bolstered by a receptive American public, sympathetic art dealers, and the critical success of now-iconic works such as The Boating Party, Renoir became famous and financially secure enough to finally marry his longtime model and mistress, Aline Charigot. But as his fame increased, his health deteriorated. Severe rheumatoid arthritis left him wheelchair bound, and, his hands rendered nearly useless, he relied entirely on assistants to place his palette and brushes in his hands as he worked. Nevertheless, much to the admiration of his colleagues (Monet especially), he continued painting in spite of his physical ailments, motivated by a selfless desire to impart beauty to the world even as Europe plunged into the cataclysmic inferno of WWI- White's research is exhaustive, her enthusiasm is infectious, and her style is unaffected, ensuring that this touching biography will enjoy a broad readership encompassing both specialists and general art enthusiasts alike. Color illus. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Renoir: An Intimate Biography." Publishers Weekly, 7 Aug. 2017, p. 62+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500340378/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be16d941. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500340378
QUOTED: "White's fascinating commentary is accompanied by a wealth of rarely seen photographs and artworks."
Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges
Donna Seaman
Booklist. 93.5 (Nov. 1, 1996): p471.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 American Library Association
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Full Text:
White, Barbara Ehrlich. 1996. 304p. index. illus. Knopf, $65 (0-679-44317-7). DDC: 759.4.
Art historians Kendall and White present fresh perspectives and new interpretations of the impressionists.
Degas' reputation is based primarily on works completed during the heyday of impressionism, but he lived until 1917 and continued to produce vital, brilliant, and groundbreaking drawings and paintings. These long neglected works are the subject of Kendall's book (and of a major exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago). His insightful and anecdotal commentary reveals a complex life during these years, full of socializing and art-making, and the reproductions present works of astonishing passion and vigor. The female nude was Degas' primary subject, and he made image after image of women bathing, brushing their hair, or dancing, continually working and reworking his surfaces with obsessive intensity. Kendall greatly extends our knowledge and appreciation of Degas, an incalculably influential artist and pure pleasure to behold.
The impressionists validated each other's creative missions and fueled each other's ambitions, but the dynamics of their mentorships, friendships, and rivalries have never been explored in detail until now. White, author of Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters (1988), has painstakingly scrutinized diaries, letters, and interviews to determine the nature of the complex, interconnected relationships between seven pairs of artists: Degas and Manet, Monet and Renoir, Cezanne and Pissarro, Manet and Morisot, Cassatt and Degas, Morisot and Renoir, and Cassatt and Morisot. She presents her discoveries in a narrative rich both in art history and astute psychological observations, offering vivid descriptions of each artist's personality and fully explicating the nuances of each unique relationship. White's fascinating commentary is accompanied by a wealth of rarely seen photographs and artworks, including portraits the artists painted of each other and of identical subjects.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges." Booklist, 1 Nov. 1996, p. 471. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18866911/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6cf75c83. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18866911
QUOTED: "revelatory, gorgeously illustrated study."
Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges
Publishers Weekly. 243.32 (Aug. 5, 1996): p423.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges
Barbara Ehrlich White. Knopf, $65 (304p) ISBN 0-679-44517-7
Impressionism, asserts Tufts art history professor White, was born of the synergistic friendship of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who pooled their expertise to develop a new style that combined Monet's feeling for nature with Renoir's coloristic gifts. Friendships, tense rivalries and working relationships among the impressionists are the focus of this revelatory, gorgeously illustrated study. Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet belittled each other to third parties, yet they pushed each other to greater heights of creativity. Apolitical conservative aesthete Paul Cezanne and magnanimous anarchist outsider Camille Pissarro shared a bohemian outlook and made 10 paintings each side by side. Mary Cassatt built her style on the manner of Degas, while Berthe Morisot leaned on Manet and Renoir for emotional support; both women, argues White, were pioneers but venerated their male mentors' work to the detriment of their own egos. Juxtaposing similar canvases by friendly duos, and quoting extensively from their letters and diaries, White shows that the impressionists were more interdependent and cross-pollinating than was hitherto suspected. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges." Publishers Weekly, 5 Aug. 1996, p. 423. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18549726/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=83b4fb34. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18549726
Renoir Reading
QUOTED: "White's readable, intriguing study sheds new light on misconceptions regarding Renoir's personality."
Library Journal. 143.1 (Jan. 1, 2018): p104.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Rathbone, Eliza E. Renoir and Friends: Luncheon of the Boating Party. Phillips Collection. Oct. 2017. 144p. illus. notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9781911282006. $34.95. FINE ARTS
Impressionist Pierre-August Renoir's famous painting Luncheon of the Boating Party is the glory of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the subject of this exhibition catalog celebrating the museum's 100th anniversary. Pictured are Renoir's friends and acquaintances, the people of 1870s Paris--Rathbone names the various figures in the painting, including Renoir's soon-to-be-bride, Aline Charigot, and discusses their relationship to the artist. This lighthearted gathering can be seen as a history painting of the times documenting the leisure of a creative group. The exhibition borrows paintings from other collections to add to the background of the creation of this painting en plein air. It is a meaningful educational rendition for modern eyes as well as an aesthetic masterpiece in which Phillips Collection chief curator emerita Rathbone and other scholars put together the pieces of its creation and historical significance. A chapter is devoted to Aline and her role in Renoir's life; other chapters discuss the collectors who made Renoir successful and his painterly eye for props such as the clothes the models wear. VERDICT By explicating the pictorial representation of Renoir's circle, this book provides a renewed appreciation for its milieu and highlights both history and aesthetics. Highly recommended for all art collections containing impressionist studies.--Ellen Bates, New York
Various. Renoir: Intimacy. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Apr. 2018.200p. illus. notes. ISBN 9788415113881. $65. FINE ARTS
In this exhibition catalog, curators Guillermo Solana (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Spain) and Colin Bailey (Morgan Library & Museum, NY) focus on one particular aspect of his work, which they refer to as intimacy, the very personal response of the artist to his subject. Renoir used his brush to emphasize the sense of touch, the sensual caress of the layers of paint upon the canvas. Regardless of the type of painting, family scenes, portraits, or nudes, the connection between artist and subject was always a visceral, tactile one. The exhibition includes works from around the world as well as those in the curators' own institutions and offers convincing evidence of this use of texture and volume to connect the painter with the surface of the canvas as well as the subject. For Renoir, to paint was to touch, to caress the surface with the strokes of his brush in his lifelong passion for the personal and intimate. VERDICT Familiar paintings take on a new aura in this volume and may be of interest to those who appreciate the work of Renoir.--Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
*White, Barbara Ehrlich. Renoir: An Intimate Biography. Thames & Hudson. Oct. 2017. 432p. illus. notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9780500239575. $39.95; ebk. ISBN 9780500774038. BIOG
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is known as one of the leading painters of the impressionist style, but he was so much more. White (Renoir: His Life, Art and Letters; Impressionism in Perspective) presents a well-rounded view of the artist's personal and professional life in her new biography of the artist. For half a century, the author has studied more than 3,000 letters relating to Renoir, meaning she probably knows him better than any other living person. Through this "intimate biography" we learn all about Renoir's intriguing life from years living in poverty to worldwide success, overshadowed by the loss of the use of his fingers. Despite it all, Renoir remained as optimistic as his artwork. His brightly colored paintings reflected his personality completely. While creating thousands of paintings he was able to maintain close relationships with fellow impressionists, art dealers, models, his family, and their families. VERDICT 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, Cezanne, and others.--Rebecca Kluberdanz, New York P.L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Renoir Reading." Library Journal, 1 Jan. 2018, p. 104. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521049448/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=62d2a84a. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A521049448
Renoir; his life, art, and letters
Reference & Research Book News. 25.4 (Nov. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780810996076
Renoir; his life, art, and letters.
White, Barbara Ehrlich.
Abrams
2010
311 pages
$50.00
Hardcover
ND553
Art historian White (emeritus, Tufts U.) devoted 20 years to finding unpublished letters and documents that gave her insight into the life and work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). In 1984 this book was published, and it is here reissued to accompany exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art during 2010. The text offers an intimate and comprehensive history, addressing Renoir's early bohemian life, his leadership of the Impressionists, travels abroad, fatherhood, marriage, acclaim, illness, and international recognition. The significantly oversize volume (10.75x13.5") allows for generous display of close to 400 illustrations, about one third in color.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Renoir; his life, art, and letters." Reference & Research Book News, Nov. 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A241136668/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=63ca4a54. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A241136668
Renoir: An Intimate Biography
QUOTED: "an extraordinarily well written ... and presented biography study that will prove to be a critically important addition to both community and academic library collections."
Internet Bookwatch. (Feb. 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Renoir: An Intimate Biography
Barbara Ehrlich White
Thames & Hudson, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017
www.thamesandhudsonusa.com
9780500239575, $39.95, HC, 432pp, www.amazon.com
Expertly researched and beautifully written by Barbara Ehrlich White (who is an Adjunct Professor Emerita of Art History at Tufts University, Massachusetts as well as arguably the world's leading authority on Auguste Renoir's life and work), "Renoir: An Intimate Biography" fully reveals this most intriguing of Impressionist artists. The narrative is interspersed with more than 1,100 extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, 452 of which come from unpublished letters. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Despite these hardships, much of his work is optimistic, even joyful. Close friends who contributed money, contacts, and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 paintings. Renoir had intimate relationships with fellow artists (Caillebotte, Cezanne, Monet, and Morisot), with his dealers (Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, and Vollard) and with his models (Lise, Aline, Gabrielle, and Dedee). Barbara Ehrlich White's lifetime of research informs this fascinating biography that challenges common misconceptions surrounding Renoir's reputation. A definitively impressive work of exhaustive and painstaking scholarship, "Renoir: An Intimate Biography" is an extraordinarily well written, organized and presented biography study that will prove to be a critically important addition to both community and academic library collections. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in his life and career that "Renoir: An Intimate Biography" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $19.24).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Renoir: An Intimate Biography." Internet Bookwatch, Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530828910/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3305942e. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530828910
QUOTED: "Barbara Ehrlich White's earlier book was already an invaluable companion and counterweight to the son's memoir; Renoir: An Intimate Biography is far beyond that earlier volume, both in the reach of its scholarship and in the insight of its understanding of Renoir's work in all its stages of development."
'Renoir: An Intimate Biography' shows an artist scarcely hinted at in the sunny swirl of his paintings
Steve Donoghue
The Christian Science Monitor. (Dec. 28, 2017): Arts and Entertainment:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Science Publishing Society
http://www.csmonitor.com/About/The-Monitor-difference
Full Text:
Byline: Steve Donoghue
As Barbara Ehrlich White makes clear in her new book Renoir: An Intimate Biography, the famous Impressionist Auguste Renoir was mind-bogglingly prolific: 4,019 paintings, 148 pastels, 382 drawings, and 105 watercolors over the course of a 60-year career. All of those things sound like the product of a normal industrious artistic career - except the first one: over four thousand paintings. That's a painting every week, with no weeks off, for the whole of his adult life. It speaks of obsessions, compulsions, even demons - odd concepts to connect with someone as genial and self-effacing as Renoir has always been reputed to be, and odd concepts to connect with the paintings themselves, which shimmer with a cheer and strange innocence that still enchant millions of museumgoers all over the world.
White, author of 2010's "Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters," admits she has an "insatiable fascination" with her subject, and for "Renoir: An Intimate Biography," she has consulted 2,000 more letters than for her previous book - a vast trove of correspondence the painter kept up with his wife, his mistress, his daughter, his sons, his illegitimate daughter Jeanne Trehot, artist friends like Manet, Matisse, Pissarro, Monet, Cezanne, Degas, and a long parade of patrons.
Renoir was born in Limoges in 1841, and soon after his family moved to Paris in 1844, he was already showing hints of artistic ability. As a teenager, he was employed painting little pictures and designs on the products of a porcelain factory, fairly tedious work Renoir escaped by regularly visiting the nearby Louvre. In 1860, White writes, he was given official permission to make copies in the Louvre, both in the galleries and in the drawing collections; by this point, he'd lost his job when the porcelain factory automated its product decorations, and Renoir was earning money with various makeshift painting jobs when in 1862, he decided to begin studying in Paris with Swiss painter Charles Gleyre.
Through Impressionist exhibitions in the 1870s and steady artistic commissions in Paris, success slowly accumulated. Acclaim among his peers had already preceded it; the greatest painters of his era considered him their luminary. But as White's indefatigable research makes clear, this bright fame had a darker, more complicated side. Renoir the happy family man is clearly visible in the warm, domestic tones of so many of his paintings, and yet White describes in great detail the second life he kept from his wife Aline, the life he led with his mistress Lise and their daughter. The smiling, accommodating Renoir is everywhere in these pages, but so too is the "wheeler-dealer, manipulative and self-serving character" White carefully constructs from letters and accounts of friends. "Renoir was conflict-avoiding, double-talking, secretive, shrewd and even sneaky," White writes. "To stay in the good graces of those on whom he depended, he ingratiated himself with friends of different opinions whose favour he needed ..."
The final decades of Renoir's life, the years of his cresting fame, were increasingly overshadowed by rheumatoid arthritis. Friends and visitors to his home were quietly astonished that the painter kept working despite his increasing debility. In his final years, Renoir could neither walk nor stand nor use his hands with any precision - but he kept painting, grateful, as he put it, to retreat into his art.
Renoir died in December of 1919 at the age of 78, leaving an estate worth millions of francs - an amount that would have been unthinkable to that poor boy wandering the Louvre seven decades earlier. Forty years after his death, his son Jean published his beloved memoir, "Renoir, My Father," a classic of the family-biography genre - with all the blind spots inherent in a son looking back over many years on the nature of his adored father. Barbara Ehrlich White's earlier book was already an invaluable companion and counterweight to the son's memoir; "Renoir: An Intimate Biography" is far beyond that earlier volume, both in the reach of its scholarship and in the insight of its understanding of Renoir's work in all its stages of development. White dismisses the two most dogged slanders to follow the artist around - misogyny and antisemitism - with calm decisiveness, but she's not interested in white-washing genuine shortcomings. 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.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Donoghue, Steve. "'Renoir: An Intimate Biography' shows an artist scarcely hinted at in the sunny swirl of his paintings." Christian Science Monitor, 28 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520692430/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2cb3e716. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520692430
Guess Who Renoir Was In Love With In 'Luncheon Of The Boating Party'
Morning Edition. 2017.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR). All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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BYLINE: SUSAN STAMBERG
HOST: DAVID GREENE
DAVID GREENE: In 1880, the artist Renoir wrote a friend that he was in a riverside town near Paris painting oarsman. He'd been itching to do it for a long time. "I'm not getting any younger," the 41-year-old artist wrote, "and didn't want to defer this little festivity."
Well, NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg says that painting, "Luncheon Of The Boating Party," is the star of a new exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington.
SUSAN STAMBERG: It's the only painting I've ever wanted to be in - 14 young people on a sunny balcony overlooking the Seine, having a wonderful town. Lunch is over - half-full wine bottles, golden grapes, pears on the white tablecloth. Now they're relaxing, talking, flirting.
ELIZA RATHBONE: I really don't know any painting in Renoir's work that surpasses "The Boating Party."
STAMBERG: Eliza Rathbone curated this show.
RATHBONE: He's at the height of his powers. Renoir has really been painting in an impressionist style for more than a decade, and he's ready to surpass himself.
STAMBERG: He asked friends to pose for him - pretty models, actresses, the wealthy painter Caillebotte in the sleeveless T-shirt for rowing, a man in a top hat, the guy who owns the restaurant where they're lunching. They probably never posed together.
RATHBONE: I think it was a logistical challenge, bringing 14 people together. We doubt he ever did quite that.
STAMBERG: The Phillipps show explains how Renoir got them all onto his large canvas. Not all his models were cooperative.
RATHBONE: One, he found so impossible, he had to dismiss her from the project.
STAMBERG: And scratched her out and painted somebody over where she had been.
RATHBONE: Exactly, and he...
STAMBERG: X-rays and infrared reveal the 19th-century scratch outs. Renoir's new and lovely substitute sits a bit apart on the left in a straw bonnet with red flowers, a blue dress, nuzzling an adorable little dog. It's a 21-year-old country girl named Aline Charigot.
BARBARA EHRLICH WHITE: She was a waitress in the creamery across the street from where he lived.
STAMBERG: ...Barbara Ehrlich White, author of "Renoir: An Intimate Biography." Aline hadn't known Renoir very long when she posed for "Luncheon Of The Boating Party," but he's fallen for her. She's pretty in pink, and plump. They'd become an item.
RATHBONE: I think that's why she has the role that she does in the painting because you wouldn't ever be in any doubt which figure he was in love with.
WHITE: He shows romance.
STAMBERG: Again, biographer Barbara White...
WHITE: He's the only impressionist that does romance in his art.
STAMBERG: Aline became one of Renoir's favorite models - also, his lover - finally, his longtime wife. Diagonally across from Aline and farther back in "Boating Party," another pretty woman stands between two attentive men - another flowered hat - black - to match her dress. She's thought to be Jeanne Samary, a famous actress.
RATHBONE: She had a huge reputation.
STAMBERG: ...Which had grown huger that summer when she got engaged to the son of a banker.
RATHBONE: And all the gossip columns in the paper were full of it.
STAMBERG: ...Because his proper parents disapproved - not our class, dear. And there's Jeanne in the painting, covering her ears with gloved hands.
RATHBONE: Perhaps she's trying to block out the gossip.
STAMBERG: A brown bowler hat covers the head of another Renoir pal in the picture, a man talking to a rosy-cheeked girl. He sits with his back to us.
WHITE: The Baron Barbier, the guy in the middle...
STAMBERG: Barbier had once been the mayor of Saigon. France ruled Vietnam in those days. Now he lived near the restaurant and stored Renoir's big canvas at his home. For 16 months, the artist traveled back and forth from his Paris studio to the restaurant in Chatou to work on the painting. And somewhere in there, Renoir had a bad accident.
WHITE: He fell off a bicycle in February of 1880, and he broke his right arm. And he was right-handed.
STAMBERG: But the intrepid Monsieur Renoir put brushes in his left hand, and kept right on painting and produced what became his masterpiece. "Luncheon Of The Boating Party" is the centerpiece of this Phillips show - it's up through early January - surrounded now by paintings of and by some of the other folks at that long-ago lunch. It's a delightful reunion of art and discoveries.
RATHBONE: There's always something new to see, even when you're talking about a masterpiece that seems so well-known.
STAMBERG: In Washington, I'm Susan Stamberg.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS' "BLUE IN GREEN")
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Guess Who Renoir Was In Love With In 'Luncheon Of The Boating Party'." Morning Edition, 26 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A513068693/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b0bf41c2. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A513068693
QUOTED: "This documentary life, based on thousands of letters, many unpublished, which she has collected since 1961, is the most personal account of any Impressionist ever written. It engages with Renoir from a domestic rather than art historical perspective, bringing to quotidian life the stick-thin, wiry, energetic painter, pipe in mouth."
"Renoir was complex, subtle, elegant and talked down to no one. You can find him in these pages, but with its treasure trove of primary sources, this book could have been so much better."
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Renoir by Barbara Ehrlich White — ‘Beauty remains’
A new biography gives us the most personal account of an Impressionist to date
Bonnard, Renoir (centre) and pianist Misia Natanson in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, 1898 © Alfred Athis, NatansonVaillant-Charbonnier collection
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Jackie Wullschlager OCTOBER 6, 2017 Print this page0
After he moved to Nice in 1917, Henri Matisse began making weekly trips to Cagnes to visit the elderly, widowed, wraithlike, paralysed Pierre-Auguste Renoir during the two years before his death in 1919. So crippled he could only paint with brushes strapped to his wrists, Renoir groaned with every stroke and Matisse asked why, given his already vast, world-famous oeuvre, he bothered. “Very simple,” Renoir answered. “Beauty remains; pain ends up passing.” Matisse promised himself that “when my time came, I would not lack courage”.
Barbara Ehrlich White takes a similarly heroic, adulatory line in Renoir: An Intimate Biography. This documentary life, based on thousands of letters, many unpublished, which she has collected since 1961, is the most personal account of any Impressionist ever written. It engages with Renoir from a domestic rather than art historical perspective, bringing to quotidian life the stick-thin, wiry, energetic painter, pipe in mouth, as he converses in a rasping guttural Paris accent to friends and lovers, rearranges his cluttered studio, chats to servants in the grand homes of his collectors. Nineteenth-century Parisian bohemia has long been frozen into myth; White’s return to primary sources allows her to catch the timbre of felt experience.
Pissarro called Renoir “the most unfathomable of men”. Restless, changeable, indecisive, stubborn yet fearful of confrontation, he is unpredictable, provocative company. The only Impressionist from an artisan background — born a tailor’s son in 1841, he was apprenticed at 13 as a porcelain painter, a life-long influence on his glistening surfaces — Renoir brought to the avant-garde feast the eager optimism and resolute hard work of the self-made, with no shred of class resentment, plus a deep love of tradition.
Half his career was spent in poverty, the other half in constant arthritic pain. But the trajectory of his work was crystalline: as he grew emaciated and frail already in his forties, “his art . . . became even more intensely hedonistic. The voluptuous, serene women of his paintings embraced a sensuality that was shrinking from his life.”
Pierre-Auguste und Aline Renoir, Les Collettes at Cagnes. Found in the collection of University of California, Art Library © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Renoir loved women. “I have a desire to kiss you in all the right places, a mad desire . . . Crazy about you”, he wrote to his wife Aline, an enormously fat provincial seamstress whose joyful sensuality inspired the great homages to democratic pleasure “Country Dance” (1883), “Dance at Bougival” (1883) and “Luncheon of the Boating Party” (1881) — all celebrate her curves and laughing expression. Later, as Renoir grew rich and successful, Aline became grasping, unhappy and diabetic while he tried to maintain a simple lifestyle. Nevertheless, at the combined age of 101 in 1901, they became parents to their third son.
“I doubt that any painter has ever depicted women in a more seductive way,” wrote critic Théodore Duret. Radically, in group compositions such as “Luncheon” and “Ball at the Moulin de la Galette” (1876), Renoir gave women the most prominent positions, combining sculptural solidity with soft strokes, dissolving colours and sprinkled light to create uniquely flattering, lively, natural portraits.
Yet Renoir was also a notorious chauvinist: “I like women best when they don’t know how to read; and when they wipe their baby’s behind themselves”; “literary women are monstrous”; “the woman artist is completely ridiculous”— even though his closest, much admired painter friend was the refined, upper-class Berthe Morisot.
White negotiates such contradictions within a strong narrative centred on how his warm relationships with women inspired the most memorable paintings: the tender, breakthrough Impressionist portrait “Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children” (1878); the monumental “Blonde Bather” (1881), modelled by Aline in Naples. Often mocked, Renoir was years ahead of his time: his hard-won classical style was foundational for the Modernists, especially Picasso, focused not on Impressionist sensation but on the human figure.
“I am still making those mistakes and I’m 40 years old,” Renoir wrote from his first visit to Rome. “I went to see the Raphaels . . . They are very beautiful and I should have seen them sooner. They are full of knowledge and wisdom. He was not searching for the impossible, like I am.” Unfolding Renoir’s long creative struggle in his own words, White movingly traces the cost to his health.
'Luncheon of the Boating Party', from the Phillips Collection
As the pioneering band of Impressionists ricocheted between financial, political and medical disasters, fresh details of their relationships to dealers, journalists, doctors, are compelling. “Only Monet is in superb health as always,” Renoir wrote when suffering the deaths of his closest colleagues. Frédéric Bazille, with whom he shared a studio, was killed at 28 in the Franco-Prussian war. Manet, whom he revered, died at 51 from syphilis. Wealthy patron Gustave Caillebotte was dead at 46 from a chest infection, Morisot at 54 from pneumonia.
At the news of Morisot’s death Renoir, painting in Provence, dropped brushes and caught the train to Paris. “I have never forgotten the way he arrived in my room in the rue Weber and held me close to him; I can still see his white Lavallière cravat with its little red dots,” Morisot’s orphaned daughter Julie recalled.
Renoir’s paternal devotion to Julie, who was beautiful, rich, intelligent and conservative, shines in counterpoint to his secret, guilty attempts to help his own sad, gauche daughter with Lise Tréhot, Jeanne, given up for adoption as a baby and resurfacing at intervals here as an emblem of the underclass Renoir left behind. Not even Aline (nor most Renoir scholars until White’s research) knew of Jeanne’s existence.
Boating Couple [said to be Aline Charigot and Renoir], 1880–81 © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Given in memory of Gov Alvan T Fuller by the Fuller Foundation
For Renoir devotees, this is an unmissable, revelatory account. Flawed, however, by extreme pedantry of style and simplistic commentary, it will soon lose the general reader, whose level of understanding White doubly underrates. First, she follows almost every quotation with laboured explanation, to the point of banal repetition. One example: her story of how Impressionist collector Eugène Murer “wrote in his journal of Renoir’s idiosyncrasies: ‘So then — he burst out in his good-natured ogre’s voice, nervously rubbing his index finger under his nose as was his habit.’ From this we learn that Murer perceived the artist as highly strung, anxious and nervous, but kind”.
Second, social history has dominated the humanities since the 1970s, but White writes as if it had never happened. “Some of his statements on women . . . would today be called sexist. To understand this, a modern person must understand the prevalent attitudes to the society in which Renoir lived. At that time, most men and women thought that women’s place was in the home and that their position should be decidedly second to the man in the family.”
Renoir was complex, subtle, elegant and talked down to no one. You can find him in these pages, but with its treasure trove of primary sources, this book could have been so much better.
Renoir: An Intimate Biography, by Barbara Ehrlich White, Thames & Hudson, RRP £24.95/$39.95, 456 pages
Jackie Wullschlager is the FT’s chief art critic
Photograph: Alfred Athis, NatansonVaillant-Charbonnier collection