One of the Impressionist era's best-loved painters, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted every day for 60 years—that's over 5,000 paintings! The joie de vivre expressed in his work is reflected on every page of Smart About Art: Pierre-Auguste Renoir in colorful, dynamic illustrations and 17 reproductions. With humor and insight, this title takes us through the life of an artist who at first was so unpopular that his paintings were attacked with umbrellas. Written as if it were a child's own class report, this title is sure to draw new young fans to Renoir's paintings. AUTHOR BIO: True Kelley lives in New Hampshire. She wrote and illustrated two titles in the Smart About Art series: Pablo Picasso: Breaking All the Rules and Claude Monet: Sunshine and Waterlilies.

Author: True Kelley
Paperback:  32 pages
Company: Grosset & Dunlap  (2005-06-16)
ISBN: 0448433710
List Price: $5.99
Amazon Price: $2.57
Used Price: $2.60

Author: Gerhard Gruitrooy
Hardcover:  144 pages
Company: New Line Books  (2006-03-01)
ISBN: 1597640964
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $10.14

In-depth fascinating study of Renoir's hugely popular painting, revealing little-known compositional changes. A perfect gift for Renoir enthusiasts.

Author: Scala Publishers
Paperback:  8 pages
Company: Scala Publishers  (2006-07-26)
ISBN: 1857592913
List Price: $9.95
Amazon Price: $10.03
Used Price: $32.50

Author: Julie Merberg, Suzanne Bober
Board book:  22 pages
Company: Chronicle Books  (2005-04-28)
ISBN: 0811847578
List Price: $6.99
Amazon Price: $3.26
Used Price: $2.57

André Bazin is a great film critic and essayist, arguably the best France ever produced. His impact on the international cinema was monumental and continues to be felt today. He popularized the auteur theory, the idea that directors were the authors of their films. He was one of the first to take American "B"" movie genres, such as Westerns and films noir, seriously. He waxed eloquently on the Italian neorealist movement of the late '40s and '50s and inspired the "New Wave" of French directors, many of whom wrote for the journal he founded and edited, the legendary Cahiers du Cinema. François Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows to him.

Bazin had a keen eye for cinematic detail and technique, but was also one of the cinema's great sociologists, psychologists, and historians. Volume two of What Is Cinema? collects some of his most characteristic writings. It contains essays on the aesthetic of neorealism; individual neorealist films by Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Federico Fellini; the brilliance of Charlie Chaplin; and the mythmaking qualities of the Western. The volume ends with an appreciation of the great Jean Gabin and three essays on sex in the movies, including the delightful "Entomology of the Pin-Up Girl." Bazin's essays are short, smoothly written, revelatory, and filled with remarkable insights and a profound love for his subject.

Author: Andre Bazin
Paperback:  207 pages
Company: University of California Press  (2004-12-13)
ISBN: 0520242270
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $15.98
Used Price: $11.88

Author: Mary Cassatt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Edward Hopper, James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Maxine Rose Schur
Hardcover:  120 pages Illustrated
Company: Pomegranate Communications  (1991-12)
ISBN: 0876548168
List Price: $17.95
Amazon Price: $13.28
Used Price: $0.46

Presents a biography of Pierre Auguste Renoir

Author: Mike Venezia
Paperback:  30 pages
Company: Children's Press (CT)  (1996-10)
ISBN: 0516200682
List Price: $6.95
Amazon Price: $3.24
Used Price: $3.18

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."

Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

Author: Jean Renoir
Paperback:  456 pages
Company: NYRB Classics  (2001-09-09) (2001-09-30)
ISBN: 0940322773
List Price: $18.95
Amazon Price: $6.98
Used Price: $4.05

A vivid exploration of one of the most beloved Renoir paintings in the world, “done with a flourish worthy of Renoir himself” (USA Today)

With her richly textured novels, Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of artists’ lives. Now, as she did in Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland once again focuses on a single painting—Auguste Renoir’s instantly recognizable masterpiece, which depicts a gathering of Renoir’s real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, Vreeland paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs so vividly that “the painting literally comes alive” (The Boston Globe).

Author: Susan Vreeland
Paperback:  448 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (2008-02-26)
ISBN: 0143113526
List Price: $15.00
Amazon Price: $8.23
Used Price: $8.37

Author: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Paperback:  32 pages
Company: Dover Publications  (2001-02-13)
ISBN: 0486415465
List Price: $4.95
Amazon Price: $2.13
Used Price: $1.97