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| Auguste Renoir La Roche-Guyon 1885-86 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland |
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| Auguste Renoir Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) 1875 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Auguste Renoir Portrait of Madame Claude Monet ca. 1872-74 oil on canvas Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon |
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| Auguste Renoir Seacoast, Normandy 1880 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Auguste Renoir Wheatfield 1879 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Auguste Renoir Woman with a Parasol in a Garden 1875 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Auguste Renoir Courtyard, Versailles ca. 1900 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Auguste Renoir Bay of Moulin Huet, Guernsey 1883 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Auguste Renoir Bouquet of Lilacs 1875 oil on canvas Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena |
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| Auguste Renoir Bouquet of Chrysanthemums 1881 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
from A Bouquet of Zinnias
How tough they are, how bent on holding their flagrant
freshness, how stubbornly in their last days instead
of fading they summon an even deeper hue
as if they intended to dry to everlasting,
and how suddenly, heavily, they hang their heads at the end.
A "high prole" flower, says Fussell's book on American
class, the aristocrats wouldn't touch them, says Cooper
on class in England. So unguardedly, unthriftily
do they open up and show themselves that subtlety,
rarity, nuance are almost put to shame.
Utter clarity of color, as if amidst all that
mystery inside and outside one's own skin
this at least were something unmistakable,
multiplicity of both color and form, as if
in certain parts of our personal economy
abundance were precious – these are their two main virtues.
In any careless combination they delight.
Pure peach-cheek beside the red of a boiled beet
by the perky scarlet of a cardinal by flamingo pink
by sunsink orange by yellow from a hundred buttercups
by bleached linen white. Any random armful
of the world, one comes to feel, would fit together.
– Mona Van Duyn (1987)
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| Auguste Renoir Bouquet on a Sofa ca. 1878-80 oil on canvas Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris |
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| Auguste Renoir Still Life with Peaches 1881 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Auguste Renoir Still Life with Peaches and Grapes 1881 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Auguste Renoir Apples and Teacup before 1919 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Auguste Renoir Apples and Walnuts before 1919 oil on panel (cigar-box lid) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |