The filmmaker Jean Renoir, son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, described how his father "looked at flowers, women and clouds in the sky as other men touch and caress." Impressionism is generally conceived of as purely visual, an optical exploration of light-dappled surfaces and shifting colors. Renoir: Intimacy instead focuses on the central role of tactile sensations in Renoir's canvases. In all the different phases of his long career,...