The National Gallery's new exhibition, Renoir and Love, brings together 43 pictures of cheerful human interactions, from dances and boating parties to the end of lunch when liqueurs were out and men were lighting cigarettes. The show celebrates Renoir's preference for the kindlier emotions and the pleasures of life, in contrast to fellow Impressionists who focused on absinthe, despair and lust.
A painter's humble beginnings
The self-portrait at the start of the show seems at odds with that cheerful outlook: the young man is strained, haunted. Renoir knew what poverty was; he just chose not to dwell on it. He came from a working-class family, his mother was a seamstress, and he himself worked at painting Watteau-style scenes on china, which may have contributed to his view that there was no harm in prettiness.
The show's title suggests romantic love, but that's not all. There is friendship between men — the portrait of his fellow artist, Frédéric Bazille, is tenderly observed, down to the slippers — and sibling affection, and motherly love. The sociable subjects should not take away from the skill in the depiction. The famous Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, Renoir's local restaurant in Montmartre, shows a garden crowded with dancing couples, but it's structured, not chaotic, with light playing across the scene.
Reputation and rapid work
In Paris, this exhibition, with mostly the same pictures, has helped raise Renoir's reputation; some French critics regarded him as a sub-par Impressionist on account of the sweetness of his subjects and style. But the virtuosity of some of these pictures reminds us how skilled an artist he could be. The real enemy of Renoir's reputation was, as the critic Robin Simon has pointed out, Renoir himself, in that he churned out so much work it was hard to keep up quality control.
His rapid work can be rewarding. His unfinished oil sketch of Young Girls or his indistinct couple in At the Fireplace are fleeting glimpses of faces and figures that capture a mood and a moment. The focus in these pictures is people, but there are some nice still lifes by the way. The Luncheon is an affectionate depiction of a couple who plainly like each other, but the glasses, the baguette, the silverware get respect too.
Joy without judgment
The London show is attractively presented, though the arrangement by theme can confuse the chronology. There's sometimes over-thinking; the caption for At the Milliner's tells us that hat shops were often places for arranging assignations, though Renoir isn't judgmental. But sometimes a milliner's is just a milliner's.
The exhibition closes in the 1880s with Renoir's farewell to Impressionism in favour of classical depictions of the female nude, much admired by Picasso and Matisse. We find here — a real coup — The Great Bathers, a depiction of three girls by a pool, one splashing the others. To the reviewer's mind, it is a bad picture. The pose of the girl in the foreground, one leg clumsily in the air, is just weird. It's based on François Girardon's classical relief of the Bath of the Nymphs, but his figures weren't as awkward as these.
That picture marks a new chapter for Renoir. This show, however, celebrates the man who made life less hard by painting happy pictures.
