Sentier dans les hautes herbes

Renoir painted this around 1874, the year the group who would be called Impressionists held their first show and drew mostly ridicule. He had been working alongside Monet at Argenteuil, just outside Paris, and it shows: the field of tall grass and flowers, the small figures with a red parasol coming down the path, all clearly answer Monet's poppy fields of a year before. The paint goes on in quick broken strokes meant to catch light and movement rather than detail. In 1875 Renoir put this canvas into a now-famous auction at the Hotel Drouot, where the Impressionists tried to sell their work and buyers barely turned up; it went for about 105 francs. From there it drifted through collections before ending at the Orsay.