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When you observe renowned landscape artist John Constable’s bucolic painting “Hampstead Heath” above, what feelings does it inspire? Calm? Nostalgia? Spiritual uplift? A surge of white supremacist pride and jingoistic fervor?For some reason – my guess is a toxic mix of colonialist guilt, multiculturalist self-loathing, and pressure from neo-Marxist donors and administrators determined to “deconstruct” Western civilization – England’s Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, recently overhauled its collections with new signage warning sensitive visitors that landscape paintings of the British countryside can evoke dark “nationalist feelings.”Paintings at the Fitzwilliam have been reshuffled into new categories that are...

Has the reach of #MeToo finally come for Renoir? ... The piece, titled "Renoir's Problem Nudes" has doozies like these: Who doesn’t have a problem with Pierre-Auguste Renoir? A tremendously engaging show that centers on the painter’s prodigious output of female nudes, “Renoir: The Body, the Senses,” at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, sparks a sense of crisis. The reputation of the once exalted, still unshakably canonical, Impressionist has fallen on difficult days. Never mind the affront to latter-day educated tastes of a painting style so sugary that it imperils your mind’s incisors; there’s a more burning issue....

Do you despise Renoir? You must know you are not alone. Renoir-loathing is a default position in today’s art world and seems to gather more adherents in the wider population each year. Expressions of it crop up in the strangest places. In 2015, provocateur Max Geller organized a “Renoir Sucks at Painting” protest outside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. “Activists” brandished signs calling Renoir an “aesthetic terrorist” and saying: “Other art is worth your while! Renoir paints a steaming pile!” and “God hates Renoir.” (When I called Geller’s protests “sophomoric” in the Boston Globe he challenged me to a duel...

In 1915, a few years after the invention of the movie camera, a young actor born in Russia, by the name Sacha Guitry, captured some of the greatest French artists and authors on film. Among others, he included Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in his first film: a silent, 22 minute long film, called Ceux de Chez Nous (“those of our house”). Here, we wanted to share three short videos, featuring Rodin, Monet and Renoir working at their workshops, painting and sculpting. CLADE MONETVIDEO: Claude Monet - Filmed Painting Outdoors (1915) The Gardens at Giverney PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR Pierre-Auguste...

When ranting about his profound contempt for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Max Geller frequently returns to the word “treacle.” The French Impressionist painter’s renderings of bourgeois leisure are shamelessly “treacly”; his portraits of doll-faced young girls are “fluffy treacle;” his misogynistic portraits of women “traffic in the most treacly pallets”; his entire oeuvre is a “steaming pile of treacle.”

It’s nothing personal, says Ben Ewen-Campen, he just doesn’t think French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir is much of a painter. Monday, the Harvard postdoc joined some like-minded aesthetes for a playful protest outside the Museum of Fine Arts. The rally, which mostly bewildered passersby, was organized by Max Geller, creator of the Instagram account Renoir Sucks at Painting, who wants the MFA to take its Renoirs off the walls and replace them with something better.

to Baltimore Museum where it was stolen more than 60 YEARS agoThe story began with one of those improbable tales of an artistic masterpiece uncovered at a flea market. It concluded Friday, the painting still a masterpiece but the story about the flea market all the more improbable. A federal judge has awarded ownership of a disputed Renoir painting to a Baltimore museum, citing 'overwhelming evidence' that the painting had been stolen from the museum more than 60 years ago. The judge's decision rejected the claims of a Virginia woman, Marcia 'Martha' Fuqua, who maintained that she bought the painting...

A treasure trove of artworks worth almost £1billion seized by the Nazis and reportedly destroyed in RAF bombing raids during WW2 has been found behind rotting food in shabby apartment in Munich. Experts have hailed the discovery of the 1,500 pictures, thought to have been lost or bombed, as a sensational find. The story of the lost masterpieces of such painters as Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall is revealed in this week's edition of Germany's Focus magazine which broke the story of the incredible find by customs officials. Art historians examining the collection claim up to 300...

A Virginia woman claiming to have purchased Renoir painting for $7 at a flea market has been unmasked and is now under FBI investigation after it emerged the painting was stolen in 1951. Marcia 'Martha' Fuqua from Loudon County, Virginia, had tried to remain anonymous and said she purchased the painting simply for its frame and had no special ‘understanding of art.’ But it has now emerged that the painting 'On the Shore of The Seine' was reported stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951, according to the Washington Post. The FBI seized the painting late last year...

(Newser) – The flea market box lot was less than $50, and the buyer picked it up mostly for the Paul Bunyan doll it contained. But it turns out the box lot also contained an original painting by Renoir that could fetch up to $100,000 in an auction at the end of the month, reports the New York Times. The 5.5-inch-by-9-inch painting of the Seine riverside is believed to be Renoir's Paysage Bords de Seine. It was bought from a French gallery in 1925 and later sold to a Maryland collector, but art historians aren't sure when or how it...

I had such fun with my first Art Appreciation "class" last week. Thanks for all your support. For this second “class,” I’d like to discuss the basic ideas behind Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Please continue to post more images that appeal to you; it’s great to have a continuing dialogue. Let’s look at Impression: Sunrise by Claude Monet (1840-1926). This was done in 1874, and when it was exhibited, the slurred comments by a critic about it being only “an impression” gave the name Impressionism to the movement. Nowadays, however, we appreciate how it moves away from detailed realism to give...

He may be leading in Iowa's presidential polls now - but months of disappointing performances have left Sen. John Kerry's campaign coffers so depleted he's now preparing to sell off the Heinz-Kerry family art treasures. "Watch for the Renoir strategy from the Kerry campaign," Newsweek's Howard Fineman told NBC's "Chris Matthews Show" on Sunday. "They're going to mortgage all their fancy paintings in the Kerry-Heinz household up in Massachusetts to raise money for the rest of this campaign," Fineman said. Kerry has already lent his campaign $6.4 million based on a mortgage of his share of the Heinz-Kerry home in...