Friday, February 10, 2012
Renoir as “fashionista”?
The current exhibition at the Frick Collection in New York, “Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting” belies Renoir’s designation as an Impressionist. Far from rapidly capturing the effect of light and color that we usually associate with Impressionism, these large-scale paintings are traditional and imposing in scale. In the style of painting, the brushstrokes and soft color that Renoir used here, we can see echoes of Impressionism; but he was more interested in using the full-length format to display the Belle Epoque attire that he saw around him. According to the exhibition catalog, Renoir came by his interest in fashion naturally: his mother was a seamstress and his father was a tailor. Whether or not we can pigeonhole the creator of these works, they are wonderfully pleasant to the eye and evocative of a lost era.
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