Aspect Extraction

A very readable book
An excellent portrayal of both the artist and the world he lived in done by his son who was both loving and objective.
A World Long Gone
One of the most beautiful memoirs ever, not only about Renoir the painter, but about the world long gone of 19th century France.  In fact, if you wanted to recreate that world, this is the blueprint -- not the world of the rich and the powerful (Proust is the blueprint for that), but the world of the rustics, the rural/urban poor, the artisans.

Jean Renoir's own memoirs of his life in cinema are also fine, but much more fragmented.  He did write like an angel.
Vivid and Heartfelt Reminiscence
Jean Renoir's memoir of his father's life is a tender hearted hagiography more than it is  a linear biography. it is a book that could only have been written by a loving son. It is intimate as one would expect from a book written by a family member and at times Jean Renoir strays off to explain some relationship or episode in language that suggested to me that he was being flooded with memories as he wrote. This gives the book in certain respects the aspect of a long and rambling recollection of the great artist that incorporates the France that he lived and worked in beautifully and results in a highly atmospheric read.
Near the end Jean Renoir wrote in describing Renoir's final years in Cagne " like all stories about Renoir, it is devoid of anything sensational" . For me that captures the spirit of this book. It is as intimate a portrait of a famous artist as I am ever likely to read and for anyone who is interested in Renoir and his work it is pure joy from beginning to end. A fabulous book.
An intelligent, perceptive, humane memoir
The great film director Jean Renoir tells the story of the life of one of the great masters of modern painting, his father Auguste Pierre Renoir. He does this in an intelligent, perceptive and humane way. He was close to his father , had many long intimate conversations with him, and truly cared for, honored and admired him.

The story begins in 1915 when the young Renoir who has been wounded in the leg is released from the Army and returns home. He has too received terrible news which has crushed his father. The mother of the family has died. Returning home he and his father develop a closer relationship than they have had before.