Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Near the Lake Painting

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This 1879/80 scenic multicolored and glossy oil on canvas painting (47.5 x 56.4 cm) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), a French artist of the Impressionism of Modern Art era. The painting is of two people (an older man and a young preadolescent girl), whom are about three feet apart from each other and are gathered on a rustic looking brown rail overlooking a wakeless sky-blue lake with one small dark-blue boat floating along the shore. There is a one occupant standing on the boat with a single pole in his hand (sometimes used to push small boats along rivers and lakes in Italy) and an outboard motor is attached to the other end of the craft. The lake’s blue color is the reflection of the calm blue color of the sky. In addition, there is a smaller blue pond nestled along the winding well-worn brown walking patch of land that runs along and around the lake. If you look closely, this trail is also occupied with a man (dressed in black trousers and a gray shirt) and a woman (dressed in a green and white dress) taking an unhurried stroll.

The background is also fixed with lush trees and numerous vines that are a mixture of diverse colors of greens, blues, and browns. The twisting of the green vines and the prominent brown tree branches located immediately behind the man, gives an opening in the middle of this painting that draws your attention not only to the two people in the picture, but to the blue lake slightly right-centered of the man.

At the very top of the painting running the entire length across, there is a three millimeter width of congested brown, gray, and green colored leaves and vines. However, because of the convolutedness, smoothness, and lack of space between these vines and leaves, my attention was drawn to t...

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... his giant hot air balloon). As the significant founders of Impressionism suspected, their first exhibition did not win over the more established painters and critics of other art forms. They were blasted in the newspaper by reviewer-humorist Louis Leroy and he was the first to use the term “Impressionist.” In addition, the word impression was in the title of one of Claude Monet’s painting labeled Impression Sunrise (Impression, Soleil Levant) that was in the exhibit. Although Louis Leroy was mildly impressed at the workmanship and its freedom, he gave backhanded compliments to the artists and considered their artwork nothing more than wallpaper and unfinished sketches. (www.impressionism.org)

Bibliography

www.artic.edu. 24 April 2014. Visited the Art Institute of Chicago. 17 May 2014.

www.impressionism.org. 2012. Visted an online website. 17 May 2014.

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