Renoir is full of life and sparkling with intelligence in these two programs made in 1961 for the American television series “Accent”. In the first, on a fine sunny day, he shows us the part of Montmartre where he was born and describes what it used to be like when his father painted there. He discusses Auguste Renoir’s friends, the Impressionist movement and a number of Impressionist paintings, shown on the screen, that allow him to evoke his childhood memories of his father’s way of painting, his models, the “porcupine” Cézanne, and the milieu he grew up in. In the second program, Renoir and interviewer Winston Burdett walk through the Impressionist museum in Paris, the Jeu de Paume. Renoir is our tour guide, commenting on the paintings, locations of landscapes, models and lives of Cézanne, van Gogh and Auguste Renoir.

Janet Bergstrom