Renoir, My Father

By Jean Renoir
Translated from the French by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver
Introduction by Robert L. Herbert

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."

Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

A touching, illuminating, and very readable story of the painter's life and work...The intelligence and sensitivity of the son, a famous film director, makes this an absorbing narrative of the artist's struggles...
— Harper's

The most important personal document on Renoir to appear in English is also one of the most engaging biographies ever written about an artist.
— Art in America

Also see:

Shelley: The Pursuit By Richard Holmes Here we have the real Shelley at last—radical agitator, atheist, and apostle of free love, as well as a brilliant and uncompromising poetic innovator.

Black Sun By Geoffrey Wolff Black Sun is master biographer Geoffrey Wolff's picture of a brilliant and self-destructive man who sought to make his life into a work of art.

Monsieur Proust By Céleste Albaret Translated from the French by Barbara Bray Foreword by André Aciman This lovely book is as close as we can come to meeting Proust in person.

Fascinating Memoirs Collection Conundrum, The World I Live In, Renoir My Father, and Hons and Rebels

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