Landscape near Essoyes (Landscape with two Figures on the Grass)

Essoyes is a small village in Champagne, and it entered Renoir's life through his wife, Aline Charigot, who was born there. From the late 1880s the family spent their summers in the village, and in 1896 they bought a house; Renoir returned nearly every year for the rest of his life. This landscape is one of those summers, painted around 1892, with two small figures resting on the grass and the hillside worked in short warm strokes. Renoir is so often thought of as the painter of Parisian crowds and cafés that it is easy to forget how much open country he painted. The fields, the laundresses and the light of Essoyes fed his work for some 30 years.