La Seine à Champrosay

In April 1877 Renoir and his friends opened their third group show in Paris, and for the first time they used the mocking nickname themselves, calling it an exhibition of Impressionists. Most of the money came from the painter Gustave Caillebotte, who was showing there too. Renoir sent his big Montmartre dance scene, along with this small view of the river, painted the year before at Champrosay, a village on the Seine south-east of Paris. There are no boats or people in it. Tall reeds crowd the near bank, all leaning one way. The water breaks into strokes of blue and white, and long clouds drag across the sky. At some unrecorded date the canvas passed to Caillebotte himself, and with his bequest it entered the Musée du Luxembourg in 1896.