John Berger

Passion begins with a sense of the uniqueness, the solitude, the vulnerability of the loved one in a harshly different world.  Or, to put this in an active rather than a passive mood, it begins with the loved one's impudence, defiance, promise of an alternative.  In an unfeeling world such a promise becomes a well in a desert.  None of this exists in Renoir's world because there are no contrasts and no edges.  Everything has been dressed by the art of painting.