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La Grenouillère (The Frog Pond)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir • Painting, 1869, 81×66 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Genre scene
Style of art: Impressionism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1869
Size: 81×66 cm
Artwork in selections: 122 selections

Description of the artwork «La Grenouillère (The Frog Pond)»

Edgar Degas for example, I hated the open air and was ready to shoot (shot) to artists that roam the highways with their easels. But when asked about Renoir, writing in the open air, Degas replied: "Renoir is another matter. He can do whatever he likes". Sometimes Renoir anyone to write in the open air, but really amazing scenery he did, when they were attended by people.

"Paddling" ("La Grenier") was the name of a school near Paris, which became popular thanks to the railroad to get here was made possible for some 20 minutes. The restaurant was located on a pontoon, moored to the banks of the Seine, but the name he was not for a special affinity for river inhabitants. Frogs were then called free in his Hobbies of ladies, which rapidly changed lovers and not recognized by society imposed moral framework. Lovers have come here to retire in the shade of the trees, alone – to find a few, but all, without exception, to heartily to dance and have fun.

Female frogs Parisians said with a smile or with contempt, whispering about their gaudily bright costumes and loud laughter. Renoir never tried to give moral values – he looked at the pretty girl and saw just a pretty girl. "Of course, sometimes can be seen in "La Grenier" as two women kissing on the lips, but they looked so unspoiled!" he said even many years later.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet came in a Paddling pool together, put the easels close, and wrote the same scene. Both often had no penny in my pocket and not a single crumb in my stomach, but they are passionately caught the glare on the water, the sunlight coming through the leaves and playing on the figures and faces of people on the grass and the water. To these two because no one wrote – no wonder, breathing the same air, the artists wrote very similar, with a hungry passion while invisible made revolution in art. Now a rare lover of painting, with no artistic education or special training to distinguish "Splash" By Monet from the "Frog" of Renoir. Daddy Furnas, the owner of the restaurant, money for lunch with these weirdos never took – sometimes only asked him to pay the sketches of landscapes that Renoir and Monet considered failed. He laughed when artists claimed that they have no special value and no one wants to buy them: "What do I care if they are beautiful and cover stains on the walls".

Degas was of course a sarcastic grumpy, but returning from a difficult gear, exhausted and tired from another trip in search of a beautiful landscape, Renoir would have agreed with him. "Plein air is not an art but a sport"- joked the artist. Whether it is portrait.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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