almost excluding the
opposition of the shadows; and, finally, vivacious attitudes and an
effort towards decorative convention. Nevertheless, his _Bathers_, of
which he has painted a large series, are in many ways thoroughly modern
and personal. Renoir's nude is neither that of Monet, nor of Degas,
whose main concern was truth, the last-named even trying to define in
the undressed being such psychologic observations as are generally
looked for in the features of the clothed being. Nor is Renoir's nude
that of the academicians, that poetised nude arranged according to a
pseudo-Greek ideal, which has nothing in common with contemporary women.
What Renoir sees in the nude is less the line, than the brilliancy of
the epidermis, the luminous, nacreous substance of the flesh: it is the
"ideal clay"; and in this he shows the vision of a poet; he transfigures
reality, but in a very different sense from that of the School.
Renoir's woman comes from a primitive dream-land; she is an artless,
wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub. He sets her in backgrounds of
foliage or of blue, foam-fringed torrents. She is a luxuriant, firm,
healthy and naive woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes
wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and
her nostrils dilated; she is a gentle being, like the women of Tahiti,
born in a tropical clime where vice is as unknown as shame, and where
entire ingenuousness is a guarantee against all indecency. One cannot
but be astonished at this mixture of "Japanism," savagism and eighteenth
century taste, which constitutes inimitably the nude of Renoir.

[Illustration: RENOIR

DEJEUNER]

[Illustration: RENOIR

IN THE BOX]

M. Renoir's second manner is more directly related to the Impressionist
methods: it is that of his landscapes, his flowers and his portraits.
Here one can feel his relationship with Manet and with Claude Monet.
These pictures are hatchings of colours accumulated to render less the
objects than their transparency across the atmosphere. The portraits are
frankly presented and broadly executed. The artist occupies himself in
the first place with getting correct values and an exact suggestion of
depth. He understands the illogicality of a false perfection which is as
interested in a trinket as in an eye, and he knows how to proportion the
interest of the picture which should guide the beholder's look to the
essential point, though every part should be co