The literal translation of Boudu sauvé des eaux is “Boudu saved from the waters” (thanks for the correction, Marilyn), which seems more apt than the English saved from drowning. After all, the very first shot, after the credits, is a stark, white, frame-filling “Boudu.” superimposed over water. The name ends in a period mark, as if it’s the definitive Boudu — Boudu period, and he’s in the water. Are we to take from this that Boudu’s natural state is being in the water, even prior to his jumping literally into the drink? Water is an ancient metaphor for chaos, for disorder; is Boudu’s life chaos? Or — more dangerous thought — is Boudu chaos himself?
In this way, we enter into Boudu Saved from Drowning, where nothing is simple, nothing is straightforward. Renoir tells us things elliptically, ambiguously, at a glance. On the surface, it’s a comedy of manners, a farce in the classic French tradition. The set-up is banal: a bourgeois bookseller Édouard Lestingois (Charles Granval), his mistress Anne-Marie (Sévérine Lerczinska) the upstairs maid and Lestingois’ wife Emma (Marcelle Hainia). Yawn. Where have we seen that one before?
It’s all there in the opening sequence: Lestingois as Pan chasing Anne-Marie, who is dressed as a nymph, around a set. It’s clearly artificial: the background is painted and the columns move when he nudges them. Over the top of it all plays a lone flute (is it Pan’s?), with that quality of mystery that the instrument often conveys. Cut to the interior of the bookshop, where he has apparently caught Anne-Marie, and is declaiming while holding her in his arms: “Anne-Marie,” he says, “you are like the nymphs. You are as graceful as they and could frolic in mossy glades . . .” Blah, blah, blah: not only is he cheating on his wife, but he’s being a pompous ass while he does so. He considers himself an educated man, a man of letters, who places himself in the classical tradition, in line with Euripides and Aristophanes.
Were original audiences lulled by this opening? Did it make them complacent about what they were about to see? Did they expect one thing and get something completely different? They apparently didn’t like what they ended up with, they tore up the theater seats and lit fires with newspapers. According to Michel Simon, who plays Boudu, the police were called regularly to the theater where the film played, and it was banned three days into its initial Paris run. Seems the sight of Boudu eating sardines with his hands, just smashing them into his mouth, as and trashing a ladies boudoir with shoe polish, was too much for refined Parisian sensibilities. Perhaps as well audiences resented being made fun of in so thorough a manner as Renoir does in this film.
Renoir’s films — in particular those from the ’30s — had a way of being banned, of pissing off the powers that be. Seven years later, Rules of the Game, considered now one of the greatest films ever made, was banned in France on the eve of World War II, after outraged audiences tore up theaters once again. As well as being massively entertaining, Renoir’s films were often political statements, and he sometimes paid the price. But he was a passionate filmmaker at a time when the French film industry had not yet become a profit-making machine modeled after Hollywood.
After the opening sets the scene with the Lestingois household, we cut to the park and a shot of . . . water. A child’s boat is being pulled across a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the Western edge of the city. And there sits Boudu himself, under a tree, squabbling with his dog. “Leave my grub alone,” he says, then tosses some to the pooch anyway. There is an open feel to this first scene in the park, a feel of freedom. It has a Dionysian look to it, or perhaps a Rousseau-like one that, for all it’s relative tameness (it is, after all, a park) still feels more open than the claustrophobia of Lestingois’ bookshop.
And that is one of the oppositions in a film full of them: the expansiveness of nature, of the world, versus the closed-in bourgeois society. Renoir frames the park in open, uncrowded compositions, with wild tangles of trees and undergrowth in the background. Inside the bookshop, and in the Lestingois’ upstairs apartment, the camera is confined, overcrowded. The compositions are closed, hemmed in by walls and the artificiality of their world.
Boudu’s dog runs off, and this sets the plot in motion, for he is despondent — Boudu, not the dog — and tired of life. He hikes into the center of town, or more precisely wanders, and onto the Ponts des Arts, right in front of Lestingois’ shop. A confirmed voyeur, the bookseller is telescopically spying on passing women from his upstairs apartment. Behind him, 
Anne-Marie is cleaning an artificial tree, complete with artificial birds, that speaks to another opposition in the film: genuine versus artificial. We have just seen the “wilds” and now we see a simulation of it, cooped up in Lestingois’ apartment.
Lestingois spots Boudu, wandering along the Seine: “Just look at that one,” he says “He’s wonderful. I’ve never seen such a perfect tramp.” To Lestingois, Boudu is a specimen, an object for study, a type. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s saying about the difference between a liberal, who feels for abstractions — the poor, the homeless, the hungry — and a conservative, who loves the individual, and will give him or her the shirt off his back. Perhaps the intensely humanist Renoir would have agreed with him about which one was more desirable.
Boudu jumps into the Seine, and Lestingois, horrified, races out of his shop, down the quay and into the water to save him. A crowd (another symbol of chaos) gathers on the banks and on the bridge, and they cheer wildly as, in conjunction with a passing tour boat and skiff, rescues the tramp in a spectacularly matter-of-fact scene. The crowd follows him — roiling and rowdy and cheering — as he brings the dripping Boudu into his shop. There, they are literally shut out of the proceedings: the door is closed, the chaos subsides, and we’re left in the relative calm of the bookshop. With one small difference: A little bit of disorder has been introduced into the shop, and it proceeds to tear their lives apart.
Boudu Saved From Drowning is structured in three acts, which it owes partly to its origins as a stage play by René Fauchois. Renoir sets the acts apart with music in the form of the solo flute played by a neighbor, which serves as a marker but also to remind us of the 
wildness that has entered into the Lestingois’ lives. (Thus another opposition: chaos versus order) Always on the cutting edge, Renoir utilized deep focus techniques — which he would perfect in Rules of the Game — to help us keep straight the geography of Lestingois’ apartment. In one breathtakingly simple tracking shot — which you can see here — he establishes the precise relationships between dining area, kitchen and the central courtyard, and as he does so, reinforces the differences in class between the denizens of each.
Another or Renoir’s technical innovations was the use of long lenses. In what is perhaps the most famous shot of the film, which you can see here, he places the camera in a second-story window, and across the street, from Boudu as he shambles along the book-stalls on the Left Bank. It’s an early example of guerilla filmmaking: the street was not cleared, and the other people in the shot are actual passersby. They have no idea who Simon is or that he is not an actual Parisian tramp.
By the time he made Boudu, Renoir was an old hand at film directing: it was his eleventh feature film as solo director. He shows how good he was at the art in his sure staging of action within the confines of the Lestingois’ apartments. As Boudu is introduced, there is almost a balletic quality to the chaos within Renoir’s closed compositions. As the crowd thins out, the staging becomes more calm and studied, except for Boudu, who is a continuing locus of confusion.
Which brings us to the center of the film, the astonishing performance by Michel Simon. All the acting is fine, especially that of Hainia, who turns what could have been an hysterical part into a deliciously understated performance. But the picture belongs lock, stock and barrel to Michel Simon. I am convinced that it is one of the greatest performances of the last 
century. Wry and physical, he is constantly in motion, literally bouncing off the walls and hanging from the doorways. Although he is clearly disturbed, it is impossible to tell when he is truly off his nut and when he is slyly messing with his benefactors and, through them, us.
The genius of Simon’s performance is that we don’t always like him, or at least I don’t always like him. He makes me nervous: I cringe while I laugh as he slides across furniture, invading the personal space of everybody he meets. He is imperious and cranky, and not at all subservient as we expect the poor to be. Perhaps that is the root of it: tramps and otherwise marginalized individuals are expected to by God act the part, to act like they are marginalized. It is a bedrock of our belief system, you hear it all the time: beggars can’t be choosers, but that isn’t the case for Boudu. He expects not only to choose, but to dictate as well. He thinks he is the equal of his middle-class benefactors, and that drives them, and perhaps us, nuts.
Another thing that drives his benefactors — as well as us? — crazy is his lack of gratitude for what they have done for him. It is seen in many ways, from Emma’s expectation that he help out to Édouard’s calling him an ungrateful to Anne-Marie lecturing about not him not saying “thank you.” The Lestingois’ expect not only gratitude but obligation out of Boudu. When Emma confronts him, intending to tell him to leave, she begins with “Mr. Lestingois and I are your benefactors.” “Yes, I know” says Boudu. “Nevertheless, you don’t seem fully conscious of your obligation to us arising from your situation.” Apparently, the charity of the Lestingois’ is not very charitable; everything they give has strings attached.
Part of what Renoir is up to in Boudu — other than making a truly funny
satire — is pitting the middle class against the under-class and, through the interaction, poking enormous fun of the former. The vacuousness of the bourgeoisie is laid bare through the actions and antics and attitude of the tramp. Boudu represents freedom; the Lestingoises live in oppression. Boudu represents chaos; the Lestingoises order. Boudu represents the real; the Lestingois’ lives are as artificial as that fake tree that Anne-Marie keeps dusting.
But the film has more going for it than mere class comedy. As Jean-Pierre Gorin points out, in a supplement on the Criterion DVD, the figure of Boudu is downright subversive, out-and-out dangerous. He is a wild element that has crept into the bookseller’s life, an element that is not altogether safe. This is shown very clearly in the rape (or is it seduction?) of Emma. Boudu 
has gotten spiffied up, with a hair-cut and a shave, and he walks with a new purpose, no longer weaving and bobbing and bouncing off the walls. It is as if he has become his benefactor Édouard. and now he is about to replace him on his marital bed as well. As she attempts to expel him from the household, he is pawing at her, making his desire for her very clear, and their conversation is about kitchen versus boudoir, but it’s clear they’re not talking about shoe polish, but about matters of sex and class. Boudu transgresses the ultimate boundary and takes her on her own bed.
From that point on, Boudu is Lestingois ‘ doppelganger, his off-skew double. He watches the shop in the bookseller’s absence, sending away a customer who wants a copy of The Flowers of Evil with a supercilious “This isn’t a flower shop.” He marries Lestingois’ mistress Anne-Marie — Emma’s double
— after he becomes solvent by winning the lottery.
It is while they are at the wedding, again in the “wilds” outside the city, that Boudu reaches for a water lily, unbalances the skiff the wedding party is in, and dumps everyone into the water. While the guests and his bride scramble for the banks, he lets the current carry him downstream. While Édouard, Emma and Anne-Marie dry off glumly on the bank, they wonder whether he has drowned or swum off. Only we know the truth: that he has been taken by whatever spirit animates him back to the wild. He has shed his new identity — quite literally, donning a scarecrow’s clothing — and gone back to cadging food imperiously from strangers.
The final shot of the film is a “bum’s parade,” shot from an extremely low angle, and interspersed with glimpses of the spires of Notre Dame. As one commentator noted, Renoir might be making a statement about the spiritual versus the earthiness of the tramps, but I think we at last understand that very first shot, of Boudu’s name, alone, over water. We start with Boudu alone and end with many; Boudu is all tramps, everywhere and at once.
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After Boudu describes what his lost dog looks like – the shaggy hair and the scruffiness – the cop says “that sounds like a dog you’d have”,
I think we’re meant, in Renoir’s schema, to find that offensive, as if the cop is stereotyping him, then this stereotypically beautiful, rich blonde comes along …
dcd, watch it then come back and tell us what you think. I’d like to hear.
Bill, I’ve not read anything by him. I’ve heard about that new book he’s got, though …
Rick et al -
Wonderful discsussion yesterday. After reading through everyone’s comments, I feel like I appreciate “Boudu..” even more, and I’m just about ready to watch it again.
I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to participate in a more meaningful way, but the demands of my job often limit the time I can spend here. (Which is why I’ve scheduled a day off when I host TOERIFC in May.)
Pat, I know we’re all looking forward to “Dancers in the Dark” It will be my first von Trier. Cool!
When you see Boudu again, come back and tell us what you’ve discovered.
I agree with Bill that Thomson is an ass (I mean, he’s British… come on), but I still enjoy reading his stuff. He can be infuriating, but then you just have to remind yourself, again, that he’s British.
One of the funny things about reading his The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is when you can tell he’s writing about movies that he really hasn’t seen all of, or most of. He’s also creepily obsessed with Nicole Kidman.
There are few things more genuinely entertaining than an ornery British dude. See also: Alan Moore.
I’ve browsed through Thomson’s big new 1000 films book, and it looks pretty fun, though obviously the short pieces are light and fluffy, not exactly substantial analyses.
I don’t mean this to be crude (HONEST!) but that 1000 movies book makes for an excellent bathroom read. And, Ed, you’re right, some of the entries don’t feel very weighty, as if Thomson is just jotting down some thoughts on Brokeback Mountain or something… but I kinda like that about his writing.
One of the odd things about Thomson, to me, is that he often talks about film as an inferior art form, that it can never live up to the art of literature. And that’s fine if he feels that way, but then he spends so much time writing on film?!? Odd.
Fox, I would never think you were being crude.
And I find that there’s still a lot of that going around, a hundred and some odd years since the advent of movies, that they’re inferior as an art form. My wife, who is a poet, gripes at me because I don’t read as much as I used to (used to be 2 or three books a week) since I’ve been watching and writing about film.
It is surprising that Thomson, who makes a living off of film, nevertheless has that attitude. Has he never seen a Tarkovsky or an Ozu or … arghhhh.
I just had trouble deciphering the quote that Sam gave us, after I got over bristling at his crotchety British assessment of Boudu as “an insignificant little melodrama.”
Rick-
He does love Ozu. That is one of his “island directors”. In one of the entries in The New Biographical… he talks about taking one movie from each of his ten fave directors. Ozu is one. Others – from my own faulty memory – are Hawks, Hitchcock, Ophuls, Mizoguchi… and well, I’ve run out. Though, I think he really does like Renoir, so I find that quote of his interesting. Though Boudu isn’t one of my fave Renoir movies, I would never call it “insignificant”.
Fox, re-reading the quote Sam gave us — and it was rather convoluted — I think Thomson’s admiring Renoir for making “an insignificant little melodrama” into something good with his “sense of momentary occasion,” whatever that means.
We don’t have the entire quote, so it’s hard to say …
That’s what I thought too, that Thomson was saying Renoir made the ordinary good. But why say it in that way?
I think film is a superior art in most cases (although I hate calling ANYTHING an art, because ANYTHING can be art which kind of makes the word useless), but I’m of course biased.
When it comes to cerebral, intellectual debate, literature probably is most fitting.
But when it comes to emotion. Visceral feelings, action and suspense, film is by far the better medium.
Also, I find it better with comedy. I’ve never actually laughed to the point of lunacy while reading a book, but by God, Curly gets me most every time!
Just my $0.02
If you’ve never uproariously laughed while reading a book, you’ve clearly never read Douglas Adams (for one).
Or Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
I have not. But I have done my fair amount of reading. I was a literature major for 4 years. But I have always found film a more interesting form.
I find that by saying that, 99.9% of people will jump all over me, but I don’t get why.
I also find it funny that they will teach kids music, literature, painting, sports …. plus a million other things, but when it comes to movies, it is simply looked at as a treat in class. Or as entertainment.
If they taught film as a class like English Literature in junior high/high school, maybe we’d be seeing the medium pushed a bit more in the right direction instead of having the fourth reincarnation of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS hitting screens across America.
This is not to say that I don’t like books…
I love reading and have as great a respect for authors as I do for filmmakers. I am simply more engaged by motion pictures.
I think you’re of a generation which has more and more people of your persuasion. Personally, I’ve laughed out loud at films and books (I laughed till I hurt at the early Douglas Adams too, though not so much his later stuff; I haven’t read Kingsly Amis).
For me, it’s kind of like comparing apples and oranges; different art forms with different qualities, giving different effects. I can be as absorbed by a book as much as by a movie; at the moment, I’m watching a lot more movies than I am reading books. In five years? Who knows.
I’ve been absorbed by books before too. 100% I do like the fact that a book can linger. It can go on for a very long time and take up many weeks of your life.
There really is no argument, you are right about comparing apples to oranges. I do think though, that films are superior in some instances.
Like I said above, action and suspense.
I don’t know if it’s a generational thing. I’m guessing most people my age haven’t seen a Renoir film before and probably won’t for as long as they live.
I think films are superior in some instances, too.
What I meant with the generational thing is that it’s well-known that in the younger generations, weaned on TV — like me — visual imagery is more important in comprehension and learning than in older generations. Therefore, you might expect more folks these days to prefer a visual medium.
You’re right, most people of your generation will never see a Renoir.
But I have always found film a more interesting form.
I find that by saying that, 99.9% of people will jump all over me, but I don’t get why.
Joe, not me. Ed and I were just responding to you saying you hadn’t laughed out loud at a book. I love movies and books but I’m not ashamed to say I prefer movies to books most of the time. With fiction especially. With non-fiction I prefer books to movie documentaries. So it’s fairly even I guess, although I see more fiction movies than I read non-fiction books.
I believe overall I prefer movies to books myself. I’m sure not reading as many books as I used to.
I wouldn’t really say I prefer one medium to the other; it truly is apples and oranges, though every medium has things it can do better than other media. I wouldn’t say comedy is one of those things, but there are things that movies do that literature isn’t as proficient at; certainly action. On the other extreme, try writing a book that does what Stan Brakhage does.
Like Jonathan, I do find myself reading way fewer novels these days; most of the fiction I consume now is in movies or comics (talk about unappreciated media!)
I also find it funny that they will teach kids music, literature, painting, sports …. plus a million other things, but when it comes to movies, it is simply looked at as a treat in class. Or as entertainment.
It’s not only the teaching of movies. Most people in general tend to think about films only as entertainment. The percentage of people who think about a movie in any serious way has got to be fairly small in comparison to the moviegoing population in general. Most people will never see a Renoir film, and if they did they’d probably hate it or fall asleep anyway. I’m not sure where I’m going with this anymore besides bitter ranting… Oh yea, TOERIFC: One reason I’m loving these discussions so much is the high level of conversation about these films, implicitly treating them seriously, as pieces of art worthy of deep thought. It’s often rather difficult to find people to have substantial film conversations with, so this is a great outlet.
I loved this movie. I loved this review. And I love these comments.
I’m with Ed. The internet is a great thing!
Books are wonderful. Novels especially. You guys are a bunch of hoseheads.
Rick said,”dcd, watch it then come back and tell us what you think. I’d like to hear.”
Hi! Rick,
I will probably comment on the film “Boudu saved from the water” or “drowning” over the weekend.
Because Sam Juliano, just send me a copy of the film “Boudu saved from the water or drowning.”
(Which I just received in my “post” (mailbox) yesterday.)
Take care! Rick,
and Thank-you! Sam Juliano,
Dcd
Bill, hoseheads ‘r us!
I’m new to the discussion here but I want to say that this Jonathan guy is a genius of the highest order and also, that books are wonderful, and movies too. Soon the TOERIFC site will revert to its normal banner and we will await Bill’s write-up of The Serpent and the Egg which I have to purchase soon so I can get screengrabs for sidebar banners for everyone. Thanks for a great discussion everyone.
Greg, are you trying to take over from Jonathan? He won’t be happy about that …
Bonjour! Rick,
or at least there are chuckles!
I watched the film Boudu sauvé des eaux over the week-end and
now I’am unable to look at your banner of Monsieur Michel Simon without laughing!
All I can is I now know why you admire Monsieur Renoir and after watching this film twice (I’am ready for my 3rd viewing) reading your resource material, and watching the bonus extras on the disc…were really beneficial to me.
I plan to summarize (a very short summary mind you…How do you summary Renoir? now, I’am an expert on Renoir?!?
after viewing one of his films twice! ) my feeling about this film tomorrow…when I return…
Merci!
Deedee
Bonjour! Rick,
Rick said,”After the opening sets the scene with the Lestingois household, we cut to the park and a shot of . . . water. A child’s boat is being pulled across a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the Western edge of the city.” And there sits Boudu himself, under a tree, squabbling with his dog. “Leave my grub alone,” he says, then tosses some to the pooch anyway.
Rick, I have to admit that was one of the “funniest”
scene in the film when the child who(m) didn’t want to go long with his Mère (after they retrieved his boat from the water) and then they both noticed Boudu under the tree with his dog and both of them (scurried (“ran”) away!)…It seemed he had that “effect” on women (or people in general…) Because of his lack of “social standing perhaps?!?”…(Shrug shoulders)…
…Rick said,”There is an open feel to this first scene in the park, a feel of freedom. It has a Dionysian look to it, or perhaps a Rousseau-like one that, for all it’s relative tameness (it is, after all, a park) still feels more open than the claustrophobia of Lestingois’ bookshop.”
I agree with you, wholeheartedly…
…Rick, you know how much the French (some of them at least… including several of the French painters’ that I listed below created some of the most beautiful scenic outdoor scenes on canvas.)
Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, (Renoir’s Père) Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, (One of my favorite artist) Berthe Morisot, and others…like, artist Seurat, whom painted the most famous scene of a day in the park entitled…
“Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”;
Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte 1884-86;
[Oil on canvas, 81 x 120 in the Art Institute of Chicago]
Additional Information From Wikipedia
Painter Frederic Clay Bartlett and his second wife, Helen Birch Bartlett, amassed a collection of modern art which included A Sunday Afternoon. They purchased the painting for $22,000 from one of Seurat’s students.
It is now displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Gallery.I have linked a website which feature his (Seurat) most famous paintings.
http://www.visioncharter.net/artseurat.asp
Merci!
Dcd
Dcd, I love impressionism, perhaps this has an effect on my love for Renoir. So many of his images are impressionistic and painterly, from those wonderful images near the end — of the riverside orchestra — to the shot of Boudu floating down the river after he falls out of the boat. It’s clear that Renoir’s father had a tremendous effect on him growing up.
“After Boudu describes what his lost dog looks like – the shaggy hair and the scruffiness – the cop says “that sounds like a dog you’d have”,
I think we’re meant, in Renoir’s schema, to find that offensive, as if the cop is stereotyping him, then this stereotypically beautiful, rich blonde comes along”
“After Boudu describes what his lost dog looks like – the shaggy hair and the scruffiness – the cop says “that sounds like a dog you’d have”,
I think we’re meant, in Renoir’s schema, to find that offensive, as if the cop is stereotyping him, then this stereotypically beautiful, rich blonde comes along”
Hi! Rick,
…or his case he had “no class”(meaning no manners…think of the sardine eating scene from the film.) and Renoir, was probably trying to point out how people from different social classes (or social standing) were/are treated in society.(and since he (Renoir) was a Frenchman, maybe how society treat the “underclass” in France.)
I noticed that scene in the film too!… It kind of “stuck-out” so to speak, like the proverbial “sore thumb.” and it could have been due to the fact, that she “probably” belonged to the Bourgeoisie class, but on the other hand, I don’t think Boudu, belong to know “social class”?
The reason that I use words such as “probably and perhaps” is because I ‘am not “quite” sure? About director Renoir, intention when it comes to this scene.
Btw, I don’t plan to summarize my feeling about the film Boudu sauvé des eaux.
Because I think that your review, summed this film up perfectly!…All that left for me to say is….Merci! Beaucoup! Rick, for the “reintro” duction to Director Renoir…
(Because I do own a copy of The Woman on the Beach (1947)…which I plan to rewatch this weekend..now, that I’am “paying closer attention” to his(Renoir) work on film.) and
(I’am also waiting for a copy of Renoir’s Bête humaine, La…(1938)aka The Human Beast. aka Judas Was a Woman.) Btw, I must give “credit” were “credit” is due, Tony(D’Ambra,) “introduced” me to this film.)
Tks,
Dcd
Btw, Rick,
I didn’t know that Monsieur Renoir, made a film based on this famous painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Le by Manet..I must seek this film out…that is if it available on dvd.
Below is a link to Monsieur Edouard Manet’s painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Le (1959) aka Lunch on the Grass
http://brushpalletteandcoffee.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
Speaking, of paintings, Rick, did you hear about this blogger whom blog is being “censured to a certain degree” by Google …
)
… because of questionable (paintings) material(s) being showcased on his blog.
(I think that he is in the process of leaving Google and now showcasing the artwork here on WordPress. (I’am not sure, but I think his name is Robert, and he maybe a Frenchman.
Being an artist, and a very “curious” (others may say, “nosy”) person, I visited his blog and it’s just like visiting the Louvre or any refined art museum.
But, in the end, I guess each visitor to his blog, will have to be the “judge” of whether his blog is “offensive” or not “offensive.”
Personally, I didn’t find his blog, to be “offensive” what so ever.
Merci!
Dcd
Clarification:
…Rick, you know how much the French (some of them at least… love to spent time in the park and several of the French painters’ that I listed below created some of the most “beautiful scenic” outdoor scenes on canvas.)
(Oh! Btw, Edgar Degas, is one of my favorite artist) not Berthe Morisot…even though I appreciate her beautiful painting too!) She was related to French painter Manet, his sister-in-law, but of course!…and she encouraged him to experiment more with “plein” painting.)
Dcd