The Grands Boulevards

The wide, tree-lined boulevard Renoir painted here in 1875 was barely older than the paint on the canvas. Only a decade or two earlier, Baron Haussmann had cut streets like this straight through the medieval tangle of central Paris, demolishing whole neighborhoods to lay down the long, uniform avenues the city is still known for. Renoir painted the result at its most fashionable, the crowds and carriages and young trees of the Grands Boulevards on a bright ordinary day. He did it the new way too, in quick daubs of bright color rather than smooth finish, the year after he and his friends had mounted their first independent show and been mocked as 'Impressionists.' Up close the strollers dissolve into flecks of paint.