Margherita d'Ayala Valva

The art is wonderful; the text, not so much. Though there is some useful information here, it's often obscured by pedantic artspeak and a welter of references that I, not being an art historian, unfortunately don't understand (and don't want to be looking up every five minutes). The text is also marred by awkward grammar and typos, due to poor translating, poor copyediting or both. What redeems the book are the wonderful selection of pictures, the introduction by Renoir's son Jean (excerpted from his biography of his father), and the ending transcripts of conversations between Renoir and Ambroise Vollard, which are a lot more illuminating about Renoir's process than anything by the main authors.… (more)