Art: Painter of Women

While headlines screamed last week of intensified air raids over Britain and Germany, in Manhattan some pictures were put on view that had seen wars before. These pictures, of flowers, apples and of blooming, apple-cheeked women, were by France's late great Impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir. Some of them had been painted during the Franco-Prussian War while German troops laid siege to Paris, some while mobs roamed the Paris streets and fired public buildings during the Commune of 1871. The last of them had been painted while World War I's Big Bertha was dropping...