Do artists paint life as it is or as they feel/believe/sense that it is?  Or as it should be? Although art in antiquity focused on reaching a point where artists  painted closely to the object under observation, as art moved into the nineteenth century, artists began to paint not as things necessarily were but as an object "impressed" them, as they reacted to their experience of it.

    One of the most famous Impressionists was Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  Born in Limoges, France, in 1841, Renoir celebrated beauty.  He celebrated the beauty of the world, the natural world, yes, but he particularly celebrated the beauty of human beings.  In this, Renoir saw the world not so much as a work of divine creation but as a playground of existential flourishing, a playground into which people had come.  Come to live and enjoy.  Renoir strove to capture this vision of existence, to picture the richness of the lived experience, to render his impression of life into meaningful form.

    Renoir died in 1919, a year after the end of the Great War.  His years had been filled with an astonishing amount of movement and change.  From Romanticism to the Industrial Revolution to modernity to the cultural ennui of World War One, he experienced much, enriching, tragic, and not.  Yet his paintings were studies in optimism, the optimism of the fullness of a remarkable, though sullied creation.

    It's a lesson for us all.