Though the crisis through which Renoir passed between 1881-83 and 1888 ought not to be
either overlooked or regarded as an error, his art is not, in its evolution, divisible. In his case there
was neither a first manner nor a final period : Renoir's art developed after the fashion of a normal,
average man, neither more poetical nor more intelligent than another; we cannot dare to speak of
his genius, -- a word which, applied to him, is monstrous. A sort of Delacroix who had lost
his aristocracy and fallen to the rank of a mere government employee, Renoir nevertheless succeeded,
like his master, in retaining his independence and guarding his liberty against the journalistic dra-
gooning of thought, against complacent admiration for progress and civic amorphism. To
remain faithful to nature was sufficient for him. His art developed after the manner of a plant in
fertile earth : from the seed to the flower and thence to the fruit. Under such circumstances crisis
becomes part of the ordinary rhythm of all growth and is the herald of vitality. Through not
having experienced the physical disquietude of puberty, the other impressionist painters passed from
childhood to old-age without becoming adult, without having felt the power of creation.

Renoir's periods of childhood were at one and the same time bold and prudent. Here and
there he sought for a father, but not a professor. Courbet -- he who painted Les Demoiselles de la
Seine -- gave him strength. «Yet, as far as I am concerned,» said Renoir, «I vastly prefer a half-
penny plate with three pretty tones on it to miles of extra-strong -- and wearisome -- painting!»
From Diaz -- «my great man,» said Renoir -- he asked for colour, which in the case of this
painter was then as brilliant as precious-stones. It was Diaz who supplied Monticelli, Renoir and
Van Gogh with the reflection of Delacroix. He was the first and for a long time the only one who
could appreciate Renoir's drawing; and it was in the midst of the Forest of Fontainebleau that they
became acquainted with each other.

But Courbet «was still tradition,» and his «clumsy draughtsmanship», his spiritual vul-
garity did not long appeal to Renoir, notwithstanding his Diane chasseresse (a faked nude) and his
Baigneuse au Griffon; whereas Manet«represented a new era in painting. . . He marked the advent
of a generation of painters at a time when the destructive work, begun in 1789, was completed».
Manet, copying Velazquez and Goya, was the forerunner, the standard-bearer of the new group,
and Renoir followed him because he taught his school simplicity and the painter's craft. His Lise
of the Folkwang Gallery in Essen followed one year later than Manet's La Femme au Perroquet,
which is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

As to Corot, whom he placed higher than Claude Lorrain himself, he was to learn from him
how, whilst remaining humbly submissive to nature, one could preserve -- as one ought -- one's
personality intact. «Behold a painter who created a tree of his own!» he exclaimed; for Corot
«corrected nature». And yet «that did not prevent him depicting her with a reality which no
impressionist painter had ever been able to equal». The story of Corot's tree was to be provided
with a parallel in Renoir's nudes.

Up to 1873 Renoir hesitated, -- at first, driven from pillar to post between the instruction
received in Gleyre's studio, Signol's admonishments, and his leanings towards the «new» painting.
For a time he appeared to escape very narrowly from the career of an official painter with his por-
traits of Sisley, Mme Darras, Captain Darras, Mme Maître, La Dame à la Cage, L'Amazone, and
other canvases... That meagre painting was fortunately mingled with subjects of every-day life which
forced Renoir to steep himself in the open air, -- in the free and salutary atmosphere of La Gre-
nouillière. Le Ménage Sisley strengthened confidence in him. Yet Renoir was manifestly seeking
to please and flatter; at times his manner bordered on preciosity; his object, as he himself said, was
to turn an easel-picture into something pretty.

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