The Trouble with Renoir

Join Martha Lucy, Deputy Director for Research, Interpretation & Education Barnes Foundation, as she presents the lecture “The Trouble with Renoir” in conjunction with the special exhibition Renoir: The Body, The Senses.

Renoir is one of the most beloved artists of all time but also one of the most detested. While one critic in 1912 named him “the greatest living painter,” another writing in 1986 called him “the worst artist ever to achieve canonical status.” What is it about Renoir that provokes such strong opinions? Martha Lucy, author of Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, unpacks the wildly divergent reactions to Renoir over the past 100 years, focusing especially on the voluptuous nudes presented in the exhibition.

Martha Lucy is Deputy Director for Research, Interpretation and Education at the Barnes Foundation. She is the co-author of Renoir in the Barnes Foundation (Yale University Press, 2012) and has published many essays on topics ranging from Darwinian themes in the work of Odilon Redon to the motif of the mirror in Impressionist painting. Her current research focuses on the sense of touch in late nineteenth-century art.