Degas mocks Renoir for seeing life through rose-colored glasses too bad. The politics of the art world are unremitting the once-cohesive Impressionists are now split three ways. The traumas of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune are only ten years distant Alphonsine is a war widow, a male model is a wounded veteran. Vreeland maintains the suspense while skillfully providing context. There are other model problems: One man is involved in a duel there is constant anxiety over the total number (13 must be avoided). Renoir finds a miraculous replacement in Aline, a 19-year-old seamstress he will marry, years later. He adds the self-styled Circe, beautiful but temperamental, foisted on him by a salon hostess she will provoke a crisis when she quits, refusing to be done in profile.

Alphonsine and Angèle are naturals the former is the owner’s daughter, the latter a bawdy child of Montmartre both women glow with vitality. The female models must be women he could love. He must find money for paints, for modeling fees and for eight Sunday luncheons for his group. He has just two months to take advantage of the summer light. He will paint a scene of boaters on the upper terrace, a wide canvas work that will surpass his Montmartre spectacle Bal au Moulin de la Galette. One July day in 1880, the 39-year-old artist is at the restaurant/hotel/boat rental when he reads a Zola essay critical of the Impressionists.

Maison Fournaise, on the Seine outside of Paris, is one of Renoir’s favorite haunts. In her fourth art-related historical, Vreeland ( Girl in Hyacinth Blue, 1999, etc.) provides an in-depth look at one of Renoir’s most famous paintings (its name is her novel’s title).

La vita moderna by Susan Vreeland