THE most popular painter in the world today, judging by gallerygoers' reactions and reproduction sales, is the sensual impressionist, Pierre Auguste Renoir. Leonardo commands greater awe, but awe is a long way from affection: at the Louvre it is not the tourists but the Mona Lisa who smiles. Van Gogh had more passion, and for a time his popularity surpassed even Renoir's, but Van Gogh's best pictures are explosive compounds of joy and sorrow, more calculated to disturb than to please. Never a shadow of sorrow crosses Renoir's canvases; he painted simple, earthly pleasures in simple, earthy terms. "A painter...
Art: THE GOOD THINGS OF LIFE
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