The Genius of Renoir: Paintings from the Clark

By John House

With an essay by James A. Ganz

With a consuming enthusiasm for the paintings of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), art collector Sterling Clark assembled one of the greatest private collections of Renoir’s work during the first half of the twentieth century. Today the masterpieces he so admired form a vital part of the Impressionist holdings of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The Genius of Renoir: Paintings from the Clark offers a fascinating, fresh look at the thirty-two Renoir paintings in the Clark collection, featuring beautiful color reproductions of each of the works.

The book brings to light new and often revelatory scholarship concerning the importance of each work, both within Renoir’s oeuvre and within the Clark collection. Among the richly varied paintings, encompassing portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, are such key works as Marie-Thérèse Durand-Ruel Sewing, A Box at the Theater (At the Concert), Onions, and Venice: The Doge’s Palace. John House, a leading authority on Renoir, offers an in-depth analysis of each of the works in the collection, and curator-author James A. Ganz draws on extensive archival research on Sterling Clark’s pursuits as an art collector and museum founder to illuminate this visionary and often enigmatic man.

John House is Walter H. Annenberg Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. James A. Ganz is curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

140 pages
55 color and 7 black-and-white illustrations
2010
ISBN 978-0-931-10292-9 (softcover)