The work of the Impressionists having been more or less thoroughly digested through a relentless diet of large servings, publishing is now working on breaking things down into component parts.

Renoir: Impressionism and Full-Length Painting (Yale) focuses on Renoir’s large-scale works as well as those by some cohorts such as Monet. Renoir had great technical skill, but a lot of his appeal is due to his affable charm - he never seems to have painted anybody he didn’t like, and his affection is invariably communicated to the viewer.

Charm can be a matter of scale, but Renoir’s life-size paintings are, if anything, even more impressive. The impact of Dance in the Country, (at the Musee d’Orsay) is far greater than it would be if the painting was more conventionally sized because Renoir is making greater demands on his craft, and because the size means that there’s no avoiding the work’s sensuality. There’s no getting away from the fact that the man in the painting is putting on the full-court press, and from the look on the woman’s face, he’s going to be successful.

My reaction when I first saw the painting was pure pleasure, not to mention admiration; it was the painting that forever altered my categorization of Renoir as the best calendar artist who ever lived.

This is a very good book, written by Colin Bailey of the Frick Collection, with reproductions that do justice to the originals, if not to their scale.

In the Pipeline…

Dan Pashman and Mark Garrison, who do a popular podcast called The Sporkful, which has been described as Car Talk for foodies, have signed with Simon & Schuster to do a book called Eat More Better: The Sporkful Guide to Eating.

Mike Browning’s Word of the Week…

somniloquist: someone who talks in his sleep.

Quote Unquote…

“I have learned throughout my life chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.”

— Igor Stravinsky