Description
Bathers at La Grenouillère is Monet’s canvas of 1869: rowing boats moored in the foreground, a wooden walkway with strollers in summer dress, bathers in the river and the trees of the island above the glittering water of the Seine. The original hangs in the National Gallery in London. We make it as a hand-painted reproduction in oil on canvas, in six sizes or to your own measurement, with a photograph of the finished work sent for approval before dispatch.
| Title: | Bathers at La Grenouillère |
| Other titles: | Baigneurs à la Grenouillère · La Grenouillère |
| Painter: | Claude Monet (1840–1926) |
| Year painted: | 1869 |
| Original size: | 92 cm x 73 cm |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Located at: | The National Gallery, London (inv. NG6456) |
| Our reproduction: | Hand-painted oil on canvas, six sizes or made to measure |
Bathers at La Grenouillère – Claude Monet
What is shown?
A summer day at a bathing place on the Seine. The lower half of the canvas is filled with hired rowing boats, green and brown, packed side by side at the water’s edge. Across the middle runs a narrow wooden walkway where women in light dresses and men in dark suits stroll and stop to look. On the right, bathers stand waist-deep in the river, small heads and shoulders in the bright water; on the left, a little cabin and a bank of trees and flowers. Above everything hang the dark leaves of the island.
What was La Grenouillère?
A bathing place and floating café on the Seine near Bougival, west of Paris, which Parisians reached by train on summer days to swim, row and dine by the river. In 1869 Monet and his friend Renoir set up their easels there side by side and painted the same crowd, the same boats and the same water.
Why does this painting matter?
The canvases painted at La Grenouillère in the summer of 1869 are often seen as one of the starting points of Impressionism. To catch light moving on water, Monet stopped describing it and laid short, separate strokes of dark blue, white and ochre side by side. Up close they are only marks; from a few steps away they become a river in sun.
The water
Most of the right half of the painting is river, and none of it is painted smoothly. The reflections of the boats and the bathers are broken into horizontal dashes, dark beside light, so the surface seems to move as you look at it. The boats in front are painted more firmly, which is what pushes the water and the crowd back into the distance.
The Seine near Paris
The river west of Paris was Monet’s workshop for years: the boating places, the bridges and the banks. The same stretch of river a little further on is The Seine at Bougival; the sailing boats in the basin at Argenteuil, a little way upstream, are The Argenteuil Basin; and the road bridge over the river there is Bridge at Argenteuil.
How is our hand-painted version made?
The painter starts with the darkest notes, the shadowed trees and the deep blue between the boats, because every light stroke needs them behind it. Then the boats, each hull in two or three firm colours, and the walkway as one long pale band. The river comes last and takes the longest: hundreds of short horizontal strokes, dark and light alternating, never smoothed together. A painted copy that blends them loses the glitter, so they stay separate.
Every piece is a hand-painted copy in oil on canvas, made for your order. An impressionist painting lives on its visible brushwork, so we do not smooth it away: the strokes stand slightly above the surface and catch the light, which a printed oil painting reproduction cannot do.
Which size for which wall?
Short answer: 90 x 70 cm above a sofa or sideboard, 60 x 50 cm for a hallway or a smaller wall, and 150 x 120 cm for a large empty wall. A painting for the living room should take up about two thirds of the width of the furniture below it. All six sizes, from 60 x 50 to 150 x 120 cm, follow the format of the original.
How high to hang the painting: put the centre of the canvas about 150 cm above the floor; above a sofa, leave 20 to 30 cm between the back and the lower edge.
Made to measure, stretcher and frame
If none of the sizes suits, we paint to measure — send the width and the height and we will quote a price and a lead time. The original measures 92 x 73 cm, a ratio of about 1.26 : 1. Every canvas painting we make is stretched over a wooden stretcher with painted edges, so it does not look unfinished without a frame. A dark wood or a deep green-grey moulding picks up the boats and the trees; a fine gold frame also suits it and echoes the light on the water.
Delivery and guarantee
We ship to the United Kingdom, Ireland and across the EU, wrapped in protective film and packed in a rigid box. Before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished work; if something on it is not right, we correct it while the canvas is still in our workshop. Every other Monet reproduction we paint is in the Claude Monet gallery, and we write about the painter and about choosing a subject on our blog.
If the painting is a gift and you are unsure of the size, there is a wall art voucher: the recipient chooses the size and the subject.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original?
In the National Gallery in London, under inventory number NG6456. The work is recorded in Wikidata, and the photograph we paint from is on fineartfree.com.
What year is it from?
From 1869. Monet painted it that summer at La Grenouillère, the bathing place on the Seine near Bougival.
Where was La Grenouillère?
On the Seine at Croissy, near Bougival, a short train ride west of Paris. It was a bathing place with a floating café, popular on summer weekends.
What is the painting about?
About light on moving water and a crowd at leisure. There is no story: the subject is a summer afternoon by the river, painted in quick separate strokes so the water seems to glitter.
Is there more than one version?
Yes. Monet painted La Grenouillère more than once in 1869; another of his canvases of the place, La Grenouillère, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
- Painted by hand. Oil on canvas, no print and no machine application.
- Six sizes or made to measure. From 60 x 50 to 150 x 120 cm, all in the format of the original.
- A photograph before dispatch. You see the finished work before it leaves the workshop.
- About the original. Year, size and inventory number as the National Gallery records them.
