Der Spaziergang

Renoir painted this in 1870, a young man not yet 30 and not yet the famous name he would become, working the summer before war with Prussia broke over France. A man in a straw boater takes a woman by the hand and draws her up a bank into the bushes, and the pull of his arm gives the whole thing its charge. She is the bright centre in a white dress caught in full sun. He hangs back in shadow, only his hands and collar and trousers catching stray light through the leaves. The woman is thought to be Lise Trehot, Renoir's companion and favourite model in these years. He was borrowing the flirtation of old French painters like Fragonard, but he built it out of loose, flickering dabs of light that were still brand new.