La Grenouillère

One summer Renoir set up his easel beside his friend Claude Monet at La Grenouillère, a floating café and bathing spot on the Seine just outside Paris where Parisians came on Sundays to swim and be seen. The two men painted the same water, the same little island and jetty, almost the same view, working fast and side by side to catch the light on the moving river. Renoir put more of his attention on the people, the small figures crowding the boardwalk. Both used short, loaded strokes and colour straight from the tube, and to contemporaries the result looked unfinished, a sketch rather than a picture. That shared afternoon of quick studies is now taken as one of the places where Impressionism began. You can still read the ripples as separate dabs of paint.