Renoir's Surprising Experiments in Perception

"I say surprising because, of course, when it comes to Renoir, we think almost at once of his paintings: all those apple-cheeked ladies and children living in a kind of bourgeois haze of comfort. But what Bailey shows us here is Renoir's process as an artist, one who was seriously engaged in the personal act of drawing for most of his career."

"You can't walk away from his powerful pieces "Portrait of Madeleine Adam" (1887) or "Study for 'Dance in the Country' " (1883) without feeling relieved to be distanced from Renoir's sometimes overwhelming sentiment: too often in the paintings, the world looks whole, to be consumed and enjoyed. It's a privilege to become more intimate with his experiments in perception and the evocative beauty of things being left unfinished."

Colin B. Bailey serves as director of the Morgan Library & Museum and curated Renoir Drawings, his first show for the institution. The exhibition reveals Renoir's longstanding commitment to drawing and his rigorous engagement with form beyond familiar painted scenes. Works like Study of the Borghese Mars demonstrate an almost abstract focus on structure, while paintings such as Bal du moulin de la Galette required the same formal knowledge. The drawings read as quieter, closer to the bone, offering intimacy with Renoir's experiments in perception and the evocative beauty of unfinished work, and providing distance from the paintings' often overwhelming sentiment.

Read at The New Yorker