La Grenouillère

La Grenouillère depicts a popular riverside bathing and boating resort on the Seine at Croissy-sur-Seine, near Bougival outside Paris. Renoir painted it in September 1869 while working side by side with Claude Monet, the two friends setting up their easels to capture the same scene from similar vantage points. The composition centers on the small artificial island known as the Camembert, planted with a single tree and linked by gangplanks, where fashionably dressed visitors gather in the shade while others bathe, row, and sail on the sunlit water. Renoir builds the image from short, rapid brushstrokes and bright colors applied almost straight from the tube, capturing the shimmer of light and reflections on the river. To contemporaries the picture looked unfinished, like a mere sketch, but it is now regarded as one of the first fully fledged examples of Impressionist painting. It remains one of the Nationalmuseum's best-known works and is frequently requested for international exhibitions.