Monet and renoir: parallel lives, comrades in art | thearticle

Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), close contemporaries and lifelong friends, became among the most famous and well-loved artists of their age and ours.  Though

their art is instantly recognisable, their lives are not so well known. They both lacked financial backing for their start in the art world.  Monet’s father, a wholesale grocer and ship’s

chandler in Le Havre, was only willing to support his son as long as he obeyed his orders, which he eventually refused to do.  Renoir came from a poorer background in Limoges, where his

father was a tailor and mother a seamstress.  Renoir left school at 13, was apprenticed in a porcelain factory, and decorated plates and cups.  Monet drew caricatures and left school at 16.

  As adults, they studied painting, absorbed the culture of the capital, and helped form the Impressionists, who would change our idea of what art is or could be. The two painters first met

in 1862 in the Paris studio of the Swiss teacher Charles Gleyre (1806-74), where Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley, rich young men, were fellow students.  Gleyre advocated a return to

classical subjects painted in the traditional 18th-century manner, the style beloved of the Salon, and had no lasting effect on his pupils.  Thin and nervous, Renoir worked quietly and

intensely in his corner, astonished by the aristocratic flair of the bourgeois Monet.  Renoir’s son, the distinguished film director Jean, recorded: “Monet amazed old Gleyre. Everyone, in

fact, was impressed, not only by his virtuosity but also by his worldly manner.  The other students were jealous of his well-dressed appearance and nicknamed him ‘the dandy.’  My father, who

was always so modest in his choice of clothes, was delighted with the spectacular elegance of his new friend.” The rebellious Monet later claimed, with a bit of bravado, that “after a

month, I said to myself, ‘What they do here is stupid.’  Renoir and Sisley were my studio mates, and I took them with me.  I said, ‘Let’s go paint outdoors.’ ”  In fact, though he disliked

the studio, he was forced to obey his father and endure the pointless tuition for 17 months.  In the spring of 1864, when  Gleyre became ill and lacked funds to pay the rent and the models,

his students gradually drifted away.  Unlike Renoir, influenced by the sensual women of Raphael and Ingres, Monet broke with tradition and refused to follow the Old Masters.  Monet’s first

biographer Charles Mount noted, “To his dismay, Renoir found that he had almost to force Monet to accompany him to the Louvre, and so contrary was Monet that once inside he would look only

at landscapes, expressing active annoyance at all other pictures.” Monet had vitality, tenacity and complete confidence in their ultimate success.  When life got difficult, he would rouse

the flagging spirits of his friend.  The more passive Renoir agreed, “I have always put myself at the mercy of fate.  I have never had a fighter’s temperament and would have given up on many

occasions if my old friend Monet—one who _does_ have a fighter’s temperament—had not been there to put me on my feet again.” After leaving Gleyre’s studio the starving painters lived

together and survived mainly on potatoes they had grown themselves.  Later on, Renoir fondly recalled their youthful hardships, occasionally alleviated by luxurious feasts: “I’ve never been

happier in my life.  I must admit that Monet was able to wangle a dinner from time to time, and we would gorge ourselves on turkey with truffles, washed down with Chambertin!” More

significantly, they wrote similar begging letters to rich friends.  Monet was more desperate and demanding; Renoir, then living with his parents, more tactful and humble.  Both felt their

colleagues were obliged to sustain them.  Monet challenged Bazille, son of a prosperous wine merchant in Montpellier: “Do you know what a situation I am living in these eight days that I

await your letter?  Well then!  Ask Renoir, who brings us bread from his house so that we do not die of starvation.  For eight days, no bread, no wine, no fire to cook by, no light—it’s

atrocious!  It is truly awful for you to forget me.”  Renoir pleaded with the sympathetic critic Theodore Duret, heir to a cognac firm: “Everybody is letting me down for my rent.  I’m 

extremely annoyed.  I’m not asking you for any more than you can do, but you would be doing me a real favor.  Of course, if you can’t do it, I will understand.” Bazille sympathised, and in

1867 the painters moved into his Paris studio.  In July he wrote to his father about their congenial group: “Monet is going to sleep at my place until the end of the month.  Along with

Renoir, that makes two needy painters to whom I’m giving shelter.  It’s like a barracks, and I am enchanted.  I have enough space, and they are both very cheerful.” In the summer of 1869

Monet was living in Bougival, 15 miles west of Paris, and Renoir with his family in a nearby village.  In August Renoir wrote to Bazille that the two companions remained close and continued

to stimulate each other: “I’m staying with my parents and I’m almost always at Monet’s, where by the way his children are getting rather old.  [Baby Jean was two.]  They don’t eat every day.

  But I’m happy just the same because as far as painting is concerned, Monet is good company.” Monet impressed Renoir with another grand gesture in 1877 when he decided to paint the Gare

Saint-Lazare and used his dominant personality to persuade the director: “Monet put on his best clothes, ruffled the lace at his wrists, and twirling his gold-headed cane presented himself

to the director of the Western Railway. . . . The trains were halted; the platforms were cleared; the engines were crammed with coal so as to give all the smoke Monet desired.  Monet

established himself in the station as a tyrant and painted amid respectful awe.  He finally departed with half-dozen or so pictures, while the entire personnel, the director of the company

at their head, bowed him out.” La Gare Saint-Lazare – Claude Monet (1877) Renoir was fascinated  by the sensual quality of skin and clothing, Monet by the ever-changing light and color of

the sea and sky.  The art dealer René Gimpel gave an amusing but fanciful account of why Monet, always passionately attached to the natural setting, rarely painted people: “Around 1889 he

had decided to give up landscapes.  He had discussed the matter with Renoir and his other friends, who had strongly advised him to study the human figure.  He had come to Paris to look for a

model and found and engaged a very good-looking young girl, who agreed to come and live at Giverny [in Normandy].  But when he returned home his wife said to him: ‘If a model comes in here,

I walk out of the house.’  That’s why we’re missing a Monet who paints portraits and the human figure.” Despite their different interests, Monet and Renoir sometimes painted the same

subject at the same time while instructing, criticizing and encouraging each other.  In 1866, when they were working side by side in the Forest of Fontainebleau, 35 miles southeast of Paris,

Renoir painted the inn, _The Cabaret of Mother Antony_, where they lodged and ate.  The burly bearded man standing in the middle of the picture and in front of a wall covered with drawings

by the local artists, wearing a blue painter’s smock and preparing to roll a cigarette, is Monet. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “In Mother Anthony’s Tavern”, 1866. The most interesting subject they

both painted is _La Grenouillière_ (the Frog Pond), 1869, an outdoor café, swimming and boating resort on the Seine near Bougival.    It was also known for the sexually free women who went

there.  In September 1865 Monet wrote Bazille, “I do have a dream, a painting of the bathing place at La Grenouillière.  I have made a few poor sketches but it is no more than a dream. 

Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to paint the same picture.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “La Grenouillère”, 1869 John House gives a perceptive account of how perspective

influenced the two strikingly similar pictures of the leisure activities: Renoir adopts a closer viewpoint, which allows him to emphasise the figures, while his free brushwork rapidly

sketches the young woman on the right, who is crossing the footbridge leading to the main establishment, and the bathers on the left, who are almost indistinguishable from the shimmering

water itself. . . . Claude Monet “La Grenouillére” 1869 Monet’s painting, which uses a limited range of colours, is infinitely more structured: the islet at the centre of converging lines

and the figures are carefully scaled to the landscape, as is the transition from the truncated boats in the foreground to the trees silhouetted against the sky in the background. . . . [The

Renoir] is so close to the Monet that it would be easy to take one for the other—the extent to which Renoir has tried to assimilate Monet’s technique and spirit becomes strikingly obvious.

Both painters appeared the next year in Henri Fantin-Latour’s homage to Manet, _A Studio at Les Batignolles._  Framed by a large painting behind him, Renoir wears a hat, clasps his hands

together and watches the seated Manet  painting his model.  Monet, standing at the right edge and overshadowed by the very tall Bazille, is almost pushed out of the picture.  A few months

later, Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian War. Henri Fantin-Latour, “A Studio at Les Batignolles,” 1870 Their camaraderie and mutual esteem kept up their spirits as these two young

Impressionists joined the effort to educate the public and change the prevailing taste for the conventional Salons. They also had to survive the unremitting hostility of the critics, who

were adamantly opposed to innovative painting.  The Impressionist auction of 1875, needed to raise money after their disastrous first exhibition, was greeted with violent animosity.  Renoir

recalled that the Hôtel Drouot was invaded.  The audience tried to obstruct the auction and howled at each bid.  The doors had to be closed until the police arrived and restored order.  Two

years later a critic again provoked the public by condemning with heavy irony the lack of clear images in both painters: “because of our poor visual education we laugh blindly at the

_Dindons_ [turkeys] by Claude Monet, which resemble only puffs of smoke, and at the _Bal du Moulin de la Galette_ by Renoir, where the figures dance on a floor that looks like those purple

clouds that darken a stormy sky.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette”, 1876 Despite these attacks, the two painters remained committed to their art and continued to

work together in the summers of 1872, 1873 and 1874.  On a trip to Naples in 1881, Renoir showed the influence of Monet’s series of poplars and haystacks when he tried his own variations on

a theme.  He wrote, “I’m in the process of doing Vesuvius morning effect, Vesuvius evening effect and Vesuvius daytime effect.”  The next year Monet loyally told their mutual agent Paul

Durand-Ruel, “It is well understood, is it not, that I will not exhibit without Renoir.” They also met for stimulating conversations with other artists during monthly sessions at the Café

Guerbois in the late 1860s and, after the change of venue, at the Café Riche in the early 1890s.  Stimulated by his colleagues, Monet recalled, “Nothing could be more interesting than these

_causeries_ [talks] with their perpetual clash of opinions.  They kept our wits sharpened, they encouraged us in sincere and disinterested research.” Renoir always remained sensitive about

his lower-class origins and seemed jealous of his bourgeois friends.  At the Riche with Monet, Sisley and Pissarro, the always nervous Renoir attacked the talented Gustave Caillebotte: “He

was edgy and sarcastic, his tone mocking, his face, already ravaged by illness, marked by a kind of Mephistophelian irony and bizarre laughter, found malicious pleasure in taunting

Caillebotte, who was red-faced and irascible.”  It’s not clear if Renoir resented the upper-class artist’s wealth and success or when ill, lost control and challenged him to sharpen the

argument. Like Pissarro and Cézanne, Renoir had a lower-class mistress—later his wife—and tried to keep his personal and professional lives separate.  He had abandoned the two illegitimate

children he’d had with his earlier model, Lise Tréhot. In 1879 the 38-year-old artist met Aline Charigot.  This 20-year-old peasant from Burgundy did laundry for a seamstress, for Renoir

and—in a strange coincidence—for Monet.  Renoir had three sons with Aline and, five years after the birth of their first child, finally married her in 1890. In 1888 Renoir complained to

Monet about his endless degrading poverty and his wretched role as itinerant guest: “I’ve had plenty of trouble wandering in cheap hotels and with no money.  We had to leave Mother Cézanne

all of a sudden because of the dismal stinginess prevailing in that house.”  Well into middle age, both friends were dependent on patrons: Monet on the department store owner Ernest

Hoschedé, Renoir on the publisher Georges Charpentier.  At a lively party at the Hoschedés’ country house, both painted welts on their faces, and Renoir put a cat’s face on Madame

Charpentier. The Impressionists were socially divided between the impoverished Monet, Renoir and Camille Pissarro, and the upper-class Degas, Manet, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.  John

House wrote that all Renoir’s well-born colleagues “commented on his agitated, anxious personal manner, his restive gestures and his erratic, voluble patterns of speech”.  Offended by his

nervous tic and greedy consumption of food, Degas asked another snobbish friend, “Do you invite those people to your house?”  In 1891 the elegant Berthe Morisot was struck by the difference

between Renoir’s female portraits and his lumpy peasant wife.  She emphasised the class differences and wrote to the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, “Renoir spent some time with us, without his wife

this time.  I will never be able to describe to you my amazement in the presence of this very heavy person, whom, I don’t know why, I had imagined as resembling her husband’s [idealised]

painting.” Monet’s wife, Camille Doncieux, had middle-class origins.  The daughter of a textile merchant in Lyon, she met Monet in 1865 when she was 18.  Most painters used their mistresses

and wives as models.  They cost nothing, were always available and obliged to follow the master’s wishes.  An attractive woman, Camille was painted by both Renoir and Monet, who called her

“a very nice, very sweet child”.  After their two sons were born, he married her in 1870.  The sons of both painters served in World War I.  Pierre and Jean Renoir were both wounded; Pierre,

more seriously, was invalided out of the army.  Jean Monet survived intact. In 1877 the hitherto prosperous Ernest Hoschedé suddenly went bankrupt.  The next year, after pooling their

common resources, he moved with his wife and six children into Monet’s modest house in Vétheuil on the Seine, 40 miles west of Paris.  Ernest was mostly absent in the city while trying in

vain to recover his fortune.  Soon after the Hoschedés arrived, Camille Monet became mortally ill with cancer. So the competent and reassuring Alice Hoschedé took care of her and Monet’s two

young children as well as her own. The upper-class Alice, accustomed to luxury and reduced to degrading poverty, took up dressmaking, gave piano lessons and drudged in the kitchen.  Deeply

humiliated by her husband’s financial disasters and the descent from the glories of her château, she sought emotional and physical comfort with Monet.  They began their guilty affair as his

wife lay dying, and in September 1879 Camille died after a long illness.  Renoir, whose 23-year-old model and lover, Margot Legrand, had also died in February 1879, tactfully and

sympathetically wrote to Monet that fall: “I want you to understand how I share your sorrow, yet for a long time I hesitated before making you remember what I should let you forget.”  After

Ernest’s death in 1892, Monet and Alice finally married. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Torso Effect of Sunlight”, 1876 Renoir not only painted with Monet, but also portrayed Monet and his family

six times.  In the summer of 1872, Renoir visited his friend in Argenteuil, twelve miles northwest of Paris.  In _Claude Monet Reading_ (1872) he has a dark beard, wears a rough dark jacket

and round hat, and sits in front of a dark background.  He’s absorbed in his folded back newspaper as smoke curls up from his long pipe.  By contrast, in the brightly colored _Madame Monet

Reading Figaro, _she has pretty features, with dark hair parted on her forehead, and wears a long blue dress with an elaborately decorated front and shoes peeping out of the hem.  She

reclines on a soft white-pillowed couch, one hand holding the newspaper, the other—with a touch of red on the sleeve—resting at her side. Pierre August Renoir, “Claude Monet Reading”, 1872

_Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil_ (1872) portrays, on the far side of the fence, a hedge with tall red and yellow flowers, shuttered yellow and blue pitched-roof houses with

dormer windows, and a hazy yellow and blue sky.  An oblique line descends from the top of the hedge to Monet standing in front of his tripod-supported canvas, holding brushes and palette,

with his paint box on the ground before him.  Concentrating on his picture, he’s at ease outdoors and immersed in the familiar landscape.  Renoir’s _Portrait of Monet_ (1875) depicts, in

three-quarter view, the impressive and commanding figure.  He stands before a drawn curtain and an oleander that circles his head like a crown.  Seen close up and filling the frame, he has

long hair and a scraggly beard, wears the familiar round hat and dark jacket.  In the midst of his work, he holds his brush and palette, and gazes confidently at the viewer. Pierre-Auguste

Renoir, “Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil”, 1873 _Camille with Umbrella_ (1873), Renoir’s most accurate portrait of Monet’s wife, shows her close up and filling the frame. 

She has high-piled dark hair, broad forehead, large widely-spaced eyes, delicate nose, full lips, round chin and charming expression.  She wears a fashionable vertically striped dress, with

white collar and wide bow, and holds in her ringed fingers an almost transparent white parasol.  _Camille Monet and Her Son Jean in the Garden of Argenteuil _(1874) shows Camille, chin

resting on one hand and holding a colored fan in the other.  She’s decorated with a high white flowered hat and a broad white dress that’s spread across the lawn, while the seven-year-old

Jean reclines comfortably against her.  A crested cock with feathered feet, escaped from the barnyard, strolls toward them, but they’re absorbed with each other and ignore this witty

stand-in for Monet.  All Renoir’s portraits were painted with great affection. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Camille Monet and Her Son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil”, 1874 In December 1883 the

two friends travelled together to the Italian Riviera and visited Cézanne in southern France along the way.  Renoir wrote rapturously to Durand-Ruel about the Mediterranean, “we saw

everything, or almost, from Marseilles to Genoa.  It is all superb.”  The following month Monet, now more solitary than the social Renoir, realising that their emphases had changed and paths

diverged, broke their old custom of working together.  He decided to make another trip south, this time to Bordighera, twelve miles east of the French border.  In advance he warned Durand:

“I’d like to ask you not to mention this trip to _anyone_ because I want to make it alone.  Much as I enjoyed traveling with Renoir as a tourist, I would find it awkward to travel with him

if I were working; I’ve always worked better on my own, according to my own impressions.  With Renoir knowing that I am about to leave, he would probably want to come with me, which would be

disastrous for both of us.  I’m sure you agree.” Their friendship survived this forced separation as well as four other potentially damaging disputes.  During the Franco-Prussian War in

1870, Renoir served in the cavalry, while Monet escaped to London.  But there was no friction and their camaraderie remained.  In 1895 Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted for selling military

secrets to Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.  Three years later, at the height of the controversy, Monet believed the Jewish captain was innocent

while Renoir became rabidly anti-Semitic and anti-Dreyfus.  He crossed the street to avoid Pissarro, and exclaimed that “to remain with the Jew Pissarro is to join the revolution” against

the government.  He accused Jews of both vanity and cowardice by declaring, “there are a lot of them in the army, because a Jew likes to walk around wearing a uniform, but if there is any

fighting to be done they hide behind a tree.” In 1890 they quarrelled more personally when Monet’s work became more popular and sold at higher prices and Renoir suffered the injustice of the

market.  In 1878 he had sold a major work, his portrait of _Madame Charpentier and Her Daughters_, for only 300 francs.  Thirty years later and during his lifetime, Durand sold it to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 84,000 francs; Renoir got nothing.  In 1890 their mutual friend Theodore Duret regretfully wrote to Caillebotte, “I was sorry to read what you had

written to me about the quarrel between Monet and Renoir.  Men who as friends had endured misfortune should not break up as soon as success comes to them unequally!”  Fortunately, their

estrangement ended the following year. Pierre-Auguste Renoir: “Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children”, 1878 Monet thought government honours were meaningless and deeply disapproved of

them.  Renoir, well aware of this, felt obliged to apologise to Monet after accepting the Legion of Honor.  On August 20,1900 he defensively explained, “I have allowed myself to be

decorated.  Believe me that I’m not telling you about it to say I’m right or wrong, but rather that this little ribbon should not get in the way of our long friendship.”  Four days later he

humbly compared his weakness to Monet’s strength and added, “I realise today, and even before, that the letter I wrote to you was silly.  I felt unwell, nervous and harried.  I am wondering

a little what it matters to you whether I’m decorated or not.  You have an admirable code of conduct for yourself, whereas I can never know on one day what I shall do on the next.”  Monet’s

biographer notes that despite this difference of opinion “he went on admiring Renoir, his work and his forbearance in ill health, while Renoir continued to praise Monet’s consistency of

judgement and behaviour.” In the fall of 1906 Monet came to Paris, where Renoir made pencil drawings of his roughly bearded, smiling, congenial friend.  They were together in October when

they heard the shocking news of Cézanne’s death.  Two years later, when Renoir had finally achieved success at the age of 67, he bought a villa, Les Collettes, in Cagnes on the French

Riviera seven miles west of Nice, and settled into wealthy comfort.  The Monets soon visited them and after Aline had made a delicious _bouillabaisse_, Monet’s wife Alice became slightly

more friendly and condescendingly told her daughter, “No, I don’t loathe Mme. Renoir as much as you think.”  They continued to exchange visits and pictures, and in 1911 Monet solicitously

wrote Durand about Renoir’s return from Normandy to the Riviera, “I was very happy to spend a few moments with Renoir, whom I found looking  better than when he came last year, and I will be

glad to know from you if his trip back went well and if he didn’t feel tired from it.” Claude Monet, “Nympheas”, between circa 1897 and circa 1898 When war broke out in 1914 Renoir, rather

bored by Monet’s endless pictures of floating flowers, declared, “Bravo!  Monet’s large water lilies are marvellous targets for firing practice!”  But writing to Monet two years later, he

politely praised the lilies and looked forward to having a sumptuous dinner that recalled the rare feasts of their youth: “I’m delighted to hear that you have some large decorations, they

will be additional masterpieces for the future.  As soon as I’m in Paris, around May I think, I’ll drop you a note.  It will be a real pleasure to share a bite with you.  Just thinking about

it makes my mouth water in anticipation.” By the time they’d achieved wealth and fame, old age and illness had caught up with them, first with Renoir and then with Monet.  As early as

February 1889 Monet told Morisot, “poor Renoir has been quite stricken, they were afraid it was a facial paralysis, but he’s much better and fortunately he didn’t panic.”  Renoir went

downhill fast, and photos show him draped in a heavy coat and shawl, bearded and beaky-nosed, shriveled, partly crippled and confined to a wheelchair.  His last, gorgeous model, the

16-year-old Dédée, stands by his side and sustains him.  After Renoir’s death, she married his son Jean. In January 1912 Mary Cassatt reported, “seeing that poor Renoir really made me sad. 

If only something could be done for him!  I’m afraid he is not getting proper care.”  The next month the emaciated Renoir described his helpless condition: “I have _lost my legs. _ I am

_unable to get up_, sit down or take a step without being helped.  Is it forever??  I sleep badly, tired out by my bones, which tire the skin.  That’s how skinny I am. Unfortunately, my

rheumatism makes me suffer constantly.”  After another visit to the invalid two years later, Cassatt criticised Aline, described his portraits of robust healthy women and added, “Renoir

suffers at times greatly, senile gangrene of the foot.  His wife I dislike and now that she has got rid of his nurse and model, she is always there.  He is doing the most awful pictures or

rather studies of enormously fat red women with very small heads. . . . I have only to look around me to see Degas a mere wreck, and Renoir and Monet too.” A few months later in August 1914,

the art dealer René Gimpel described the sad but stoical Renoir, who was determined to work to the very end: “He’s a frightful spectacle with a sunken head and fleshless hands like chicken

claws, in which brushes were placed between his fingers and fastened with string.  Yet the chair-bound cripple with his quivering stumps: it all vanished when you saw those eyes, what

animation and vivacity.”  Monet had then reversed their traditional roles and compared Renoir’s fortitude when suffering constant pain to his own weakness: “Renoir, always valiant, in spite

of his sad condition, while I lose all courage [to paint], despite being the healthy one.” Renoir’s last brave words before his death on December 3, 1919 were: “Give me my palette. . . .

Those two woodcocks. . . . Turn the head of that woodcock to the left. . . . Give me back my palette. . . I can’t paint that beak. . . . Quick, some paints. . . . Move those woodcocks.” 

Right after Renoir’s death Monet expressed his sorrow at the loss of his old companion-in arms, whom he loved dearly.  He kept next to his bed Renoir’s nude _Young Girl Bathing_ (1892), now

in the Metropolitan Museum.  In profile and sitting on a cloth-covered rock before a swirling greenish background, with long auburn hair touching her full breasts, rosy cheeks and eyes cast

modestly down, she’s sensual but still innocent. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Young Girl Bathing”, 1892 Degas and Mary Cassatt had gone blind, and Monet also began to lose his sight around 1920.

  Two years later he lamented, “I am almost blind and should give up all work.”  But three cataract operations, strong spectacles and eye drops improved his vision, and he bravely soldiered

on toward the blurred series of water lilies.  Monet lived to 86, the last survivor of the comrades who had struggled for recognition in the early days of Impressionism.  He elegiacally

concluded that the group of innovative artists had finally triumphed in the art wars: “Three of us, Degas, Renoir and I have had our revenge.  We can say we have had a happy life, the others

died too young.”_ _ _In the early 1960s Jeffrey Meyers saw Renoir’s son Jean teach at UCLA and his grandson Alain teach at Berkeley.  A mere academic, Alain told him “the blood has run

thin.” Meyers has published five books on art: Painting and the Novel, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, Impressionist Quartet, Modigliani: A Life and Alex Colville: The Mystery of

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