Renoir: An Intimate Biography by Barbara Ehrlich White

     It was maybe about a year ago, while I was living in Brooklyn, NY, attending Pratt Institute, seeking my MFA in painting and drawing, that I took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art while they had their Eugene Delacroix exhibit in the winter months of 2018 going into 2019. I had already been making weekly, or semi-weekly trips to the place, copying ancient works of art from Egypt and Africa, along with Chinese and Greek works, wanting a break from the overly academic constraints of Pratt, but after seeing the Delacroix exhibit, and feeling my spirits raise, I headed over to a gift booth area and saw this title sitting there. A big, juicy, epic long biography of one of my favorite painters, and definitely my favorite Impressionist: Pierre Auguste Renoir.
     Since purchasing the book, and taking it back to my apartment in Williamsburg, (hopping the 2
necessary subways to get back from Manhattan) I started reading about this person's life with great enthusiasm at my little card table and folding chair set up in the living room-slash-kitchen of my one bedroom apartment, (best described as one closet attached to another closet), with a yellow light bulb from a ceiling fan overhead. It must have been the winter break from my classes at Pratt when I started it, and I got really into it for the first few months.
     When you're young, and haven't yet ventured out into the adult world, you really don't understand what makes the great people great, whether it's Renoir or Delacroix. It's not just talent, but an unrelenting drive to "make it happen" no matter what. As I walked through the Delacroix exhibit, and later broke into my newly acquired Renoir book, I realized what type of person this is and why we find them so inspiring, they were just determined to make it happen come Hell or high water.
     The biggest revelation that came from this biography was the recent discovery of a pair of illegitimate children he'd apparently had, that no one knew about until 2002.
     That's right, it was kept a secret until well after his death, to protect his reputation. That really shocked me. The first was a boy, Pierre Trehot (surname of the mother, Lise Trehot) who was given up to the state and presumably did not survive, as there are no documents with his name on them after the birth certificate. Very Sad...
    But the girl, Jeanne Trehot, Renoir apparently felt guilty abandoning, already perhaps regretting the loss of his son, so gave her up to a well to do family and kept in touch with her secretly throughout her life. This was confirmed by a series of letters discovered as I said, in the early 2000s.  That's just such a remarkable phenomenon that can only happen with history. Some bit of evidence could be discovered next week that totally changes everything. You think you know a guy...
     The woman in question, Lise Trehot, you will be sad to discover eventually left him for one of Frederic Bazille's wealthy friends. She seems to have believed in Renoir's talent a great deal, but his financial situation was taking too long to solidify, and they were both approaching 30, with nothing on the horizon, so I can't really blame her. The one thing that redeems her though, is that history eventually proved her right. Renoir did become the success that she always believed he would be, even if it took longer than she would have liked. She still saw the potential. Perhaps the romantic in me wants to take that as a small, silent victory for this otherwise anonymous woman. She can look at Renoir's name in the paper, fifteen years after settling into her new life, with husband and kids and be like: "Called it!"
     To go back to his disowned son, Pierre Trehot, I can't help but imagine the dark possibility that he did survive infancy and was integrated into society as an anonymous laborer or employee somehwere, blissfully unaware of who his father was. On the birth certificate, they only put his mother's name, pretending the father to be unknown, (this was before paternity tests) and whether or not the young man would have tried to seek out his mother later in life, we don't know, but there appears to be no evidence (yet) that he did. I'm just picturing him walking through a Renoir retrospective, or hearing people discuss the Impressionists not knowing his relation. Just a thought to torture yourself with. Ugh...
     I also wasn't aware of how long it took for the Impressionists to be taken seriously. We all know how they struggled in the beginning to gain a following, but I'd always assumed it was maybe a few years, not a few decades. They really didn't give up. It makes me think about the logistics here. The generation of people that finally made them relevant was probably a completely different age group from the critics who initially laughed at them. A whole new community of young people needed to come of age and venture into the adult world with their fresh perspective in order for the Impressionists to gain attention. Whether or not the old fuddy duddies ever came around and had a change of heart, I guess we'll never know, or care. But still, it is inspiring to look at it that way. The group of people that comprises your following may not even have been born yet. Or they could be some grade school kids playing tag on the schoolyard as we speak. Or the parents of your future fans might be teenagers in high school right now, getting into mischief and stumbling through awkward boy-girl relationships. The point is, the world is a big place, and it truly does take all kinds. Even kinds that haven't been born yet.