Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Garden in the Rue Cortot

Garden in the Rue Cortot – the neglected garden behind the Montmartre studio

Garden in the Rue Cortot is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1876. The original measures 97.5 cm x 151.8 cm and is held by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. We paint our version by hand in oils on canvas, in eight portrait sizes, from 40 x 60 to 120 x 190 cm. Among them is 98 x 152 cm, which matches the measurement of the original.

Dahlias in a garden nobody tended

The painting was made in the short period when Renoir had a rented studio in Montmartre. He chose the place because it was near the Moulin de la Galette, where he was painting another scene at the time. Behind the studio lay a neglected garden, and it was there that this canvas with dahlias was made, for which he used clean, bright patches of pigment. Two figures stand in the background, not carried through to full detail; the prevailing opinion is that they are Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The scene rests on clean, bright patches of colour that lie beside one another without running together, and that is exactly what a print handles worst: the screen flattens them into an even area with a hard edge. A hand-painted canvas leaves every patch separate and of differing thickness, so the flowers stay individual. The outlines of the two figures in the background also stay soft, as they are, instead of hardening into a flat silhouette.

In the room

The format is upright and tall, so it asks for a narrow, high wall: the strip beside a door, the space between two windows, a stairway, or the end of a hall where the eye travels upward. For an ordinary living room we suggest 70 x 110 or 80 x 125 cm. On a large wall 98 x 152 cm works, which is also the measurement of the original, with 90 x 140 cm as the step below it. Under 50 x 80 cm the dahlias merge into a coloured area and the two background figures disappear, so we do not suggest smaller sizes for this subject.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Garden in the Rue Cortot arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: garden with dahlias behind the Montmartre studio, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 40 x 60 cm to 120 x 190 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: he took that studio for its nearness to the Moulin de la Galette, where he was painting another scene; the two background figures are taken to be Monet and Sisley

See also:

• On the Banks of the Seine at Rueil
• Path Leading through Tall Grass
• Springtime (in Chatou)