Paul Bonaventura reviews Renoir: Intimacy at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, on view through January 22, 2017.

Bonaventura writes: “Guillermo Solana, the Thyssen’s artistic director and curator of the show, suggests in the catalogue that Renoir had his brain in his hands. Painting for him was not an intellectual pursuit to be conjectured and argued over, it was a felt activity, and he harnessed his materials in order to arrive at an expressive truth. Renoir looked at things ‘as other men touch and caress’ and his work has the capacity to make us feel what we see.”