Renoir. Nathalia Brodskaya

cm

      Musée Marmottan, Paris

      As with every artist, Renoir’s passions in art altered with age, but from childhood the Louvre remained for him something unassailable. “It is in the museum that people learn how to paint,” he said. “I often argued about that with some of my friends who put up against me the absolute preferability of working outside, among nature. They disparaged Corot for reworking his landscapes in the studio.”

      Monet Painting in His Garden in Argenteuil

      1873

      Oil on canvas, 50 × 62 cm

      Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (Connecticut)

      Much later, when he was no longer young and already a mature artist, Renoir had the opportunity to see Rembrandt in Holland, Velázquez, Goya and El Greco in Spain, Raphael in Italy. His encounter with each of the Old Masters brought him joy: “You have to be able to take from each master that satisfaction that he wanted to give us… But it is there, in the museum, that you get a taste for painting that nature alone cannot give you”.

      Young Girl Reading a Magazine

      c. 1873

      Oil on canvas, 35.5 × 27.5 cm

      Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

      Providence, Rhode Island

      At that time, however, when the friends gathered at the Closerie des Lilas and Renoir lived and breathed ideas of a new kind of art, he always had his own inspirations in the Louvre. “For me, in the Gleyre era, the Louvre was Delacroix” he confessed to Jean. The death of Eugène Delacroix in 1863 caused the whole young generation of French artists to realize what the painting of the great Romantic had been for them.