[Illustration: SISLEY. OUTSKIRTS OF A WOOD.]
A refined _charmeur_, _Auguste Renoir_, has made important discoveries, in portrait painting especially. He is peculiarly the painter of women, whose elegance, delicate skin, and velvet flesh he interprets with extraordinary deftness. Léon Bonnat's portraits were great pieces of still-life. The persons sit as if they were nailed to their seats. Their flesh looks like zinc and their clothes like steel. In Carolus Duran's hands portrait painting degenerated into a painting of draperies. Most of his portraits merely betray the amount which the toilettes have cost; they are inspired by their rich array of silk and heavy curtains; often they are crude symphonies in velvet and satin. The rustle of robes, the dazzling--or loud--fulness of colour in glistening materials, gave him greater pleasure than the lustre of flesh-tints and any glance of inquiry into the moral temperament of his models. Renoir endeavours to arrest the scarcely perceptible and transitory movements of the features and the figure. Placing his persons boldly in the real light of day which streams around, he paints atmospheric influences in all their results, like a landscapist. Light is the sole and absolute thing. The fallen trunk of a tree upon which the broken sunlight plays in yellow and light green reflections, and the body or head of a girl, are subject to the same laws. Stippled with yellowish-green spots of light, the latter loses its contours and becomes a part of nature. With this study of the effects of light and reflection there is united an astonishing sureness in the analysis of sudden phases of expression. The way in which laughter begins and ends, the moment between laughter and weeping, the passing flash of an eye, a fleeting motion of the lips, all that comes like lightning and vanishes as swiftly, shades of expression which had hitherto seemed indefinable, are seized by Renoir in all their suddenness. In the portraits of Bonnat and Duran there are people who have "sat," but here are people from whom the painter has had the power of stealing and holding fast the secret of their being at a moment when they were not "sitting." Here are dreamy blond girls gazing out of their great blue eyes, ethereal fragrant flowers, like lilies leaning against a rose-bush through which the rays of the setting sun are shining. Here are coquettish young girls, now laughing, now pouting, now blithe and gay, now angry once more, and now betwixt both moods in a charming passion. And there are women of the world of consummate elegance, slender and slight-built figures, with small hands and feet, an even pallor, almond-shaped eyes catching every light, moist shining lips of a tender grace, bearing witness to a love of pleasure refined by artifice. And children especially there are, children of the sensitive and flexuous type: some as yet unconscious, dreamy, and free from thought; others already animated, correct in pose, graceful, and wise. The three girls, in his "Portrait of Mesdemoiselles M----," grouped around the piano, the eldest playing, the second accompanying upon the violin, and the youngest quietly attentive, with both hands resting upon the piano, are exquisite, painted with an entirely naïve and novel truth. All the poses are natural, all the colours bright and subtle--the furniture, the yellow bunches of flowers, the fresh spring dresses, the silk stockings. But such tender poems of childhood and blossoming girlhood form merely a part of Renoir's work. In his "Dinner at Chaton" a company of ladies and gentlemen are seated at table, laughing, talking, and listening; the champagne sparkles in the glasses, and the cheerful, easy mood which comes with dessert is in the ascendant. In his "Moulin de la Galette" he painted the excitement of the dance--whirling pairs, animated faces, languid poses, and everything enveloped in sunlight and dust. Renoir's peculiar field is the study of the various delicate emotions which colour the human countenance.