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RENOIR

Name: RENOIR
Author: Barbara Ehrlich White
ISBN: 978-0-500-23957-5

AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY

by Barbara Ehrlich White ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2017

Ideal for readers seeking to delve deeply into Renoir’s personality; those seeking critical assessments of the individual...

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An in-depth biography of the French impressionist painter.

White (Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, 1996, etc.) is one of the leading authorities on the life and work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), “one of the greatest and most creative artists who ever lived.” Here, the author offers an “intimate” look into his life, a narrative fueled by her amassing a cache of more than 3,000 letters. Many are from the families of Renoir’s illegitimate daughter, Jeanne, and his three sons, including the great film director Jean (whose own biography of his father White calls “historical fiction”), as well as from fellow artists. They shed particular light on his relationships with key women in his life, especially his wife, female models, and fellow artist Berthe Morisot. In workmanlike prose, White moves forward in seven chronological sections, each representing specific phases of Renoir’s career. Throughout, the author presents Renoir as an “inspiring and heroic individual who overcame daunting obstacles.” In his early years, he experienced great poverty; when he finally began to find success, he became afflicted with paralyzing rheumatoid arthritis, which turned his fingers and hands into gnarled fists. He would have a brush tied between his fingers so he could continue to paint and smoke his beloved cigarettes, both of which he did relentlessly. Renoir created 4,019 paintings and hundreds of pastels and drawings. He was “complex, maddeningly ambivalent, yet endearing,” but he could also be “secretive, shrewd and even sneaky.” Though the writing is often dry, White does a fine job of tracing the phases of his career. His work—“permeated with the freedom and joie de vivre of the Impressionists, fused with a classical search for balanced compositions and form”—inspired many painters, including Matisse and Picasso (they almost met).

Ideal for readers seeking to delve deeply into Renoir’s personality; those seeking critical assessments of the individual works should look elsewhere.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-500-23957-5

Page Count: 456

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)