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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919) MOTHER AND CHILDREN Canvas, 41 1/2 inches by 67 1/2 inches YOUNG woman, elaborately dressed in the fashion of the late seventies, leading her young daughters, also richly attired, along a Parisian promenade, Almost life-size. The children, typically Parisian, walk in front of their mother, on holding a doll with starting eyes matching those, equally startling, of the mother and her serious-looking children. The picture is charge with that luminous atmosphere which characterized the work of the school to which the artist belonged. It is an excellent illustration of their credo: La luminere, C'est la vie!" The painting comes direct from the artist. Born at Limoges, Renior was apprenticed in his twelfth year in the atelier of a porcelain painter, but the commercial decoration of plates by the transfer process disgusted him, and as soon as he could he turned to the painting of calico curtains. This also failed to satisfy his creative instincts, and he went to Paris. Here he tired in vain to enter l'Ecole des Beaux Arts, and fell back on the atelier Gleyre, where he joined Monet, Sisley and Bazille. He soon became a leader in the group of impressionist painters who have made so vivid a mark on recent French art. He died December 2, 1919, at Cagnes, Alpes-Maritimes, and worked to the last, lovingly and with enthusiasm, "putting color on canvas to amuse himself" as he himself said.