Albert Cahen d’Anvers 

Curator: Just look at the swirling colors in this Renoir painting of Albert Cahen d’Anvers. He is so still but it seems the brushstrokes are dancing all around him. There's a lovely dissonance. Editor: It strikes me as a portrait of studied leisure. The sitter's posture, the faint hint of a cigar… Renoir presents the accoutrements of a well-to-do man, quite deliberately framed. It hints at the cultural positioning portraiture can represent. Curator: Yes, there is that definite air of bourgeois comfort. The details in the wallpaper seem so close to abstraction, then you notice how it complements, in the loveliest way, the floral arrangement just behind and to the left. Those reds and blues feel like a whole garden distilled to one canvas! Editor: Note how the backdrop threatens to overwhelm the subject, which I believe, may even challenge the conventional notion of the "important" sitter. While undeniably the focal point, Cahen d'Anvers nearly blends into the background, subsumed into a world of texture. Could that express Renoir's feeling about the sitter’s particular cultural relevance, do you think? Curator: Maybe… or maybe it’s just Renoir being Renoir. He painted people like they were shimmering fields of wheat, faces becoming merely another plane upon which light and color could play. It's like he saw beyond status to find the vibrations within someone’s soul, and the composition reveals this. Editor: An interesting counterpoint, seeing how portraits from that era generally reified power and distinction, as public records, if you will. In this canvas the social figure is, arguably, quite literally dissolving! A compelling paradox. Curator: The world shifts, you know? Styles shift, taste shifts. Yet something indefinable remains in that gaze… Editor: It lingers long after we step away, and makes you ponder about shifting representation, yes? Thanks to this vibrant dialogue between Renoir, his sitter and history.