ten introduction M. Albert Andre gives a
portrait of Renoir that is almost too good to be true: we are encouraged
to believe just what we should like to believe. It is incredibly
sympathetic. Yet it is very much what we might have guessed from the
pictures had we dared. And, indeed, we did dare--some of us; for,
besides its purely aesthetic character, its French taste and tact, the
art of Renoir has over-tones to which the literary and historical
intelligence cannot choose but listen. An intimate eulogy of France by
a most lovable Frenchman is what, in our lazy moods, we allow these
pictures to give us. They do it charmingly. For instance, though I never
saw a Renoir that could justify a district visitor in showing more of
her teeth than nature had already discovered, here, unmistakably, are
Parisians enjoying themselves in their own Parisian way. Here is the
France of the young man's fancy and the old man's envious dreams. Here,
if you please, you may smell again that friture that ate so well, one
Sunday at Argenteuil, twenty years ago, in the company of a young poet
who must have had genius and two models who were certainly divine. And
that group with the fat, young mother suckling her baby--there is all
French frankness and French tenderness and family feeling without a
trace of its wonted grimness and insincerity.

Renoir is as French as French can be, and he knows it:

Lorsque je regarde les maitres anciens je me fais l'effet d'un bien
petit bonhomme, et pourtant je crois que de tous mes ouvrages il
restera assez pour m'assurer une place dans l'ecole francaise, cette
ecole que j'aime tant, qui est si gentille, si claire, de si bonne
compagnie... Et pas tapageuse.

Renoir will have his place in that school, but another niche has been
prepared for him amongst an even grander company. When, in 1917, _Les
Parapluies_ (a beautiful but not very characteristic work) was placed in
the National Gallery some hundred English artists and amateurs seized
the opportunity of sending the master a testimony of their admiration
which, rather to their surprise and to their intense joy, apparently
gave pleasure. In this they said:

Des l'instant ou votre tableau s'est trouve installe parmi les
chefs-d'oeuvre des maitres anciens, nous avons eu la joie de
constater qu'un de nos contemporains avait pris place d'emblee parmi
les grands maitres de la tradition europeenne.

They said not a word too m