This vivid, insightful account of the life of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, one of the most prominent and beloved of the Impressionist painters--is enlivened by quotations from the artist himself, his friends, and his family, including his son, film director Jean Renoir. 206 illustrations, 128 in color.

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as "Grand Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game," tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it " remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have." Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is the Impressionist artist most indelibly associated with an idyllic vision of modern life, captured in paintings of charming young girls, bohemian outings, round-cheeked children, and voluptuous bathers, all presented with breathtaking spontaneity. While his principal medium was oil painting, he produced exquisite pastels and watercolours in which his deft touch and supple colourings were especially effective. Renoir's pastel counterproofs, never-before exhibited or published, range across the spectrum of his subjects, from the mid-1870s to the second decade of the twentieth century. There are compositions related to one of his most famous paintings, the Moulin de la Galette, and a few are also clearly related to the artist's most famous colour lithographs. The counterproofs, reverse impressions taken from a pastel or drawing, were done in association with his dealer Ambroise Vollard, who stored them in a portfolio, where they remained unseen for nearly a century. This catalogue contains a foreword, introduction, essay and thirty colour plates, as well as documentation provided by the Wildenstein Institute. SELLING POINTS: Accompanies an important exhibition at Adelson Galleries, New York, November 2005 - January 2006 Provides a foreword, introduction, essay and thirty colour plates, as well as documentation provided by the Wildenstein Institute in Paris Renoir's pastel counterproofs have never before been exhibited or published 30 colour illustrations

A Companion to Jean Renoir “An extraordinary collection of essays that more than fulfills the aims of its editors, Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau. The essays offer exciting, original work from younger scholars as well as long-established authorities, all of which offer invaluable insights into the films, writings, and life of Jean Renoir. Receiving particular attention are questions about the singularity or multiplicity of what the editors call the many ‘Renoirs’ (French, American, Indian; even transnational), especially from the early 1930s through the early 1960s. Whether mining relatively unexplored archive materials, deploying newly current methodological approaches, interrogating one of a wide range of topics and issues, or engaging in close textual analysis, the contributors construct a tantalizing series of innovative ‘road maps’ for future researchers to pursue.” Richard Abel, University of Michigan “Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau have brought together essays that bring new perspectives to both the best-known and the lesser-known of Renoir’s films. Both French cinema specialists and viewers new to Renoir’s work will find much of interest in this outstanding collection.” Judith Mayne, Ohio State University Dubbed simply “the best director”’ by François Truffaut, Jean Renoir is a towering figure in world film history. This exhaustive survey of his work and life features a comprehensive analysis of his films from the multiple critical perspectives of the world’s leading Renoir scholars. Renoir’s career spanned four decades and four countries and included an extraordinary body of films, some of which – La Grande illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939) – are universally recognized masterpieces. Fathered by the celebrated painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the filmmaker lived through much of the twentieth century, beginning his career in the silent era and ending it in full Technicolor. His films are notable for their paradoxical combination of strong internal coherence and thematic breadth and diversity, and they provide a rich source for today’s scholars of film history and French culture. This handbook, the largest volume on Renoir ever produced in the English language, ranges in scope from extreme close-up analysis of individual films to long-shot explorations of his aesthetics and the social and cultural contexts in which he worked. The most ambitious critical study of Renoir to date, this book will appeal to film enthusiasts as much as scholars and specialists.

This stunning book, published to accompany a major touring exhibition, examines Renoir's landscape art in depth, demonstrating that he was one of the most audacious and original landscape artists of his age.