This is an easy to read delightful book which opens the door to the development of early Impressionism in France through the life of Renoir and his friends including Sisley, Monet, Cezanne, Pissaro and Manet. Full of colourful anecdotes, the book written by Renoir’s son, Jean, tells how Renoir began work as a china painter (which ended when factories began to mass produce both the china and the designs on it). He went on to paint blinds and then the full wall of a restaurant, before picking up his palette, easel and those revolutionary new tubes of paint which enabled him to venture out into nature and to paint what was before him before the light changed. He also began to produce portraits of ordinary folk in his own family and among his friends, seeing them as more worthy subjects than those of the formal portraits found in the Louvre.

He was certainly not alone in these preoccupations and the book includes Renoir’s and his artist friends’ regular discussions about the sterility of learning to paint from the classics in the Paris academy.

The book includes revealing details of French life in the late 19th Century and Renoir’s fondness for old French customs and styles of architecture and dress which were being swept away by political upheaval and the march of ‘progress’.

Cost to buy: AUD $20 plus postage.

Contact: It’sAllAboutTheBook@gmail.com with your order.