Claude Monet peignant dans son jardin à Argenteuil

In the summer of 1873 Renoir was staying with his friend Claude Monet at Argenteuil, a riverside town outside Paris, and he set up here to paint Monet himself at work. Monet stands at his easel among the dahlias in a neighbor's garden, absorbed, a painter caught in the act of painting. The two men worked side by side that season, often on the same scenes, pushing each other toward quick, broken strokes and bright daylight color. Within a year they and their friends would hold the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, mocked by most of the critics who came. Renoir gives the flowers as loose dabs of red and green, and Monet's own canvas on the easel is only a blur.