View of Bougival

Renoir painted this riverside view at Bougival in 1873, a stretch of the Seine just west of Paris where city people came on Sundays to boat, drink and stroll. It was a restless moment for him. The official Salon kept turning the new painters away, and the next spring, in 1874, Renoir and his friends would mount their own independent show, the one that earned them the mocking nickname Impressionists. You can see why here. The scene is built from quick, bright touches: blue-violet shadows across the road, salmon pink on the little staircase, warm orange on the skiffs pulled up along the bank. In the middle a man and a woman pause, seemingly caught between taking a boat and taking a walk, the sort of easy riverside flirtation Renoir would paint for the rest of his life. The whole thing is small, barely larger than a sheet of drawing paper.