The book I’ve been recommending a lot lately is “Renoir, My Father,” by Jean Renoir. Even if you feel, like I do, that Renoir’s later paintings are too saccharine by a mile, this memoir, by his son, the film director, is one of the most vivid, honest and loving portraits of an artist you will ever read. It’s utterly unpretentious and richly evocative, and even if you have no interest in Renoir, or painting, or the France of the latter half of the 19th century, it still holds a thousand charms.
