Art: THE GOOD THINGS OF LIFE

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...

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