Renoir: An Intimate Biography

The joy that permeates Renoir's paintings was created by a complicated person. Even close friends and family members were often baffled by the multi-faceted and contradictory artist. Having known Renoir for over twenty years, Camille Pissarro complained in a letter to his son Lucien: `Nor can I understand Renoir's mind - but who can fathom the most changeable of men?'

Here, the world's leading authority on the life and work of Auguste Renoir presents an intimate biography of this great Impressionist artist. Her narrative is interspersed with over a thousand extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, of which 452 come from unpublished letters. Through these words, the reader gains direct contact with Renoir, as an artist, friend and father. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Close friendships with scores of people who helped him with money, contacts and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 optimistic, life-affirming paintings. Barbara Ehrlich White brings a lifetime of research to bear in her biography to provide an unparalleled and intimate portrait of this complex artist.

Review: 'Comprehensive ... a cradle-to-grave account' - Sunday Times

'The leading Renoir scholar Barbara Ehrlich White has mined the artist's voluminous correspondence to depict the man in the round' - RA Magazine

'Renoir is brought to life through his own words and those of his friends' - Leisure Painter

'Most artistic studies are made from the outside, looking in. This contribution to the literature of a much-observed figure provides a sense of looking outwards from the point of view of the man himself' - Art Book Review

'The most personal account of any Impressionist ever written ... an unmissable, revelatory account' - Financial Times

'This new study has the blessing of the Renoir family. No one, not even Renoir himself, can ever have commanded so much information on the topic' - Daily Telegraph

'Renoir would have been grateful for the thoroughness with which his new biographer Barbara Ehrlich White has peeled away the myths and lies' - Independent

'Scholars of Renoir will be indebted to White for assembling so many new letters that shed fresh light on the tecture of Renoir's family life, friendships and daily routines' - Literary Review

'As thorough as it is readable' - Art Newspaper

'Comprehensive and authoritative...provides an account of the artist's life, work and impact from a contemporary and inside viewpoint. It is a compelling and engaging read' - The Artist