The system of loosely dabbing and dashing paint employed by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to preserve the spontaneity of a late summer or early autumn moment at Argenteuil (a suburb of Paris on the bank of the Seine), or, perhaps, to capture the sun dappling of a woman’s torso, involved the eye of the beholder more directly than ever before. This was color laid down separately next to each other and mixed only by the spectator’s eye. The eye perceives a mosaic of various colors from broken brushstrokes forming a vibrant whole only interpreted from a distance.

An Impressionist painting attempts to capture an elusive moment. The sudden explosion of scientific activity left the nineteenth century artists rich in new pigments. The colors rushed onto canvas squeezed liberally from a tube. It was the Impressionists that set themselves the sternest task of all when they attempted to find a technique with which to capture a mere instant in time.

Renoir would be what we call today, a starving artist. There were times in the 1860s when he didn’t even have enough money purchase paint to work with. He wasn’t without friends that recognized his prodigious talent and helped him along the way.

Later in life, but still painting, he became wheel chair ridden afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, needing an assistant to place the brush in his hand. He did, however, have the pleasure before he died to view his paintings among the master’s at the Louvre. His painting, Bal au moulin de la Galette sold for 78.1 million dollars in 1990. That’s pretty good for a poor boy.