Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

 
Renoir was a French painter and a leader in the development of the Impressionist style. Six of his paintings hung in the First Impressionist Exhibition in April, 1874, in Paris. Other than that, Renoir certainly needs no introduction from me. I note simply that he traveled in Italy between 1881 and 1883. In Naples he visited the National Museum and the ruins of Pompeii, later making mention of his admiration for the frescoes there.

 
In 1881, he painted the work shown here: The Bay of Naples, a work that shows why the phrase “sparkling color” crops up in so many descriptions of his works. Here, even the centerpiece of Vesuvius is reduced to a secondary role by the “impression” of sparkle, even glare. (Your eyes should start to hurt if you look at this too long, exactly as they would if you stood at the spot in person and stared out at the bay.) The scene appears to have been painted from the area along the sea approximately where the Villa Comunale ends and before you get to Mergellina. The Castel dell’Ovo is missing either out of artistic license (castles are notorious for not being “sparkly,” no matter how hard you try) or because I am totally misreading the painting (always a possibility!).

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