Girl with a Watering Can

     "Le Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicts a Popular Parisian dance hall. Throngs of people have gathered; some people crowd the tables and chatter, while others dance energetically.  So lively is the atmosphere that viewers can virtually hear the sounds of music, laughter, and tinkling glasses.  The whole scene is dappled by sunlight and shade, artfully blurred into the figures to produce just the effect of floating and fleeting light the Impressionists so cultivated.  Renoir's casual unposed placement of the figures and the suggested continuity of space, spreading in all directions and only accidentally limited by the frame, position viewers as participants rather than as outsiders.  Whereas classical art sought to express universal and timeless qualities, Impressionism attempted to depict just the opposite - reality's incidental, momentary, and passing aspects."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 909

Le Moulin de la Galette



On the Terrace



Two Little Circus Girls (Or Girls with Oranges)

     "By 1886 most critics and a large segment of the public accepted Impressionists as serious artists.  Just when their images of contemporary life no longer seemed crude and unfinished, however, some of these painters and a group of younger followers came to feel Impressionists were neglecting too many of the traditional elements of picture making in their attempts to capture momentary sensations of light and color on canvas.  In a conversation with influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard in about 1883, Renoir commented: 'I had wrung Impressionism dry, and I finally came to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw.  In a word, Impressionism was a blind alley, as far as I was concerned.'  By the 1880's four artists in particular were much more systematically examining the properties and the expressive qualities of line, pattern, form, and color: Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cezanne. ... [These] four artists and others sharing their views have become known as Post-Impressionists.  This classification also signifies their chronological position in nineteenth-century Western painting."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. II, p. 916