and Monet to the human face—­for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic there is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings of colours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he had come under the influence of Monet’s theories.  Mauclair points out that fifteen years before pointillisme (the system of dots, like eruptive small-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir in his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings.  He painted Richard Wagner at Palermo in 1882.  In his third manner—­an arbitrary classification—­he combines the two earlier techniques, painting with the palette-knife and in divided tones.  Flowers, barbaric designs for rugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that long and varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself at Bougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among the trees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris in outdoor humour—­and not a discordant or vicious note in all this psychology of love and sport.  The lively man who in shirt sleeves dances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping through the vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges to profiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the sullen ouvrier of Zola or Toulouse-Lautrec—­nor are the girls kin to Huysmans’s Soeurs Vatard or the “human document” of Degas.  Renoir’s philosophy is not profound; for him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say in the old Swinburne days.  He is a painter of joyous surfaces and he is an incorrigible optimist.  He is also a poet.  The poet of air, sunshine, and beautiful women—­can we ever forget his Jeanne Samary?  A pantheist, withal a poet and a direct descendant in the line of Watteau, Boucher, Monticelli, with an individual touch of mundane grace and elegance.

Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engineered the portrait of herself and children and the portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879 Salon.  The authorities did not dare to refuse two such distinguished women.  Renoir’s prospects became brighter.  He married.  He made money.  Patrons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn Salon, he was given a special salle, and homage was done him by the young men.  No sweeter gift can come to a French painter than the unbidden admiration of the rising artistic generation.  Renoir appreciated his honours; he had worked laboriously, had known poverty and its attendant bedfellows, and had won the race run in the heat and dust of his younger years.  In 1904, describing the autumn exhibition, I wrote:  “In the Renoir salle a few of the better things of this luscious brush were to be found, paintings of his middle period, that first won him favour.  For example, Sur la Terrasse, with its audacious crimson, like the imperious challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gorgeous fabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme; the quaint head of Jeanne Samary—­a