strokes around
the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues
similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and
almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious attitudes
and decorative convention."

Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has thus far shown no hint of
the bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women
full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His _genre_ tableaux
are personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such as
Dejeuner and The Box--both have been exhibited in New York--the
luminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the delicious
dissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner his
affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. His
landscapes are more atmospheric, division of tones inevitably
practised. Everything swims in aerial tones. His portraits, once his
only means of subsistence, are the personification of frankness. The
touch is broad, flowing. Without doubt, as Theodore Duret asserts,
Renoir is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters; the
first to apply unflinchingly the methods of Manet and Monet to the
human face--for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic there
is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings of
colours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he had
come under the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair points out that
fifteen years before _pointillisme_ (the system of dots, like eruptive
small-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir in
his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings. He painted Richard Wagner
at Palermo in 1882. In his third manner--an arbitrary
classification--he combines the two earlier techniques, painting with
the palette-knife and in divided tones. Flowers, barbaric designs for
rugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that long
and varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself at
Bougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among the
trees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris in
outdoor humour--and not a discordant or vicious note in all this
psychology of love and sport. The lively man who in shirt sleeves
dances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping through
the vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges to
profiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the