ulty. It
is in this most recent part of his evolution, that Renoir appears the
most capricious and the most poetical of all the painters of his
generation. The flowers find themselves treated in various techniques
according to their own character: the gladioles and roses in pasty
paint, the poor flowers of the field are defined by a cross-hatching of
little touches. Influenced by the purple shadow of the large
flower-decked hats, the heads of young girls are painted on coarse
canvas, sketched in broad strokes, with the hair in one colour only.
Some little study appears like wool, some other has the air of agate,
or is marbled and veined according to his inexplicable whim. We have
here an incessant confusion of methods, a complete emancipation of the
virtuoso who listens only to his fancy. Now and then the harmonies are
false and the drawing incorrect, but these weaknesses do at least no
harm to the values, the character and the general movement of the work,
which are rather accentuated by them.

[Illustration: RENOIR

YOUNG WOMAN IN EMPIRE COSTUME]

Surely, it would be false to exclude ideologist painting which has
produced wonders, and not less iniquitous to reproach Impressionism with
not having taken any interest in it! One has to avoid the kind of
criticism which consists in reproaching one movement with not having had
the qualities of the others whilst maintaining its own, and we have
abandoned the idea of Beauty divided into a certain number of clauses
and programmes, towards the sum total of which the efforts of the
eclectic candidates are directed. M. Renoir is probably the most
representative figure of a movement where he seems to have united all
the qualities of his friends. To criticise him means to criticise
Impressionism itself. Having spent half of its strength in proving to
its adversaries that they were wrong, and the other half in inventing
technical methods, it is not surprising to find that Impressionism has
been wanting in intellectual depth and has left to its successors the
care of realising works of great thought. But it has brought us a sunny
smile, a breath of pure air. It is so fascinating, that one cannot but
love its very mistakes which make it more human and more accessible.
Renoir is the most lyrical, the most musical, the most subtle of the
masters of this art. Some of his landscapes are as beautiful as those of
Claude Monet. His nudes are as masterly in painting as Manet's, and more
s