Pierre-Auguste Renoir – La Grenouillère

La Grenouillère – a landscape from Renoir’s early years

La Grenouillère is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1869. The original measures 99.7 cm x 74.6 cm and is held by the National Museum in Stockholm. We paint our version by hand in oils on canvas, in eight landscape sizes, from 50 x 40 to 150 x 110 cm. Among them is 100 x 75 cm, the size that comes closest to the original.

Landscape in Renoir’s early work

About the canvas itself – what can be seen on it and what its surface is like – our record holds no description, and we do not invent one here. Something else is recorded: the place landscape held in Renoir’s work. Through the first two decades of his career he gave a great deal of his time to landscape, and perhaps precisely because the presentation of human figures did not occupy him, it was there that he went most successfully into the study of light, colour and form, and of the brushstroke. Freedom of expression and inventiveness with colour did much for his popularity.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. A landscape of this kind rests on the passages between colours and on a stroke that stays visible, and that is just what a print does not hold: the screen cuts the passages into bands, and soft edges turn hard. A hand-painted canvas keeps the stroke as it was made – thin and dry in one place, denser in another – and the light moves between the colours instead of standing still. The surface stays alive even when the viewer steps closer.

In the room

The subject is horizontal and quiet, so it carries a wide wall in a shared room: above the sofa, above a sideboard, or facing the entrance to the living room, where it can be looked at from a little distance. For an ordinary room we suggest 80 x 60 or 100 x 75 cm, the second being the size closest to the original. On a large wall 130 x 100 cm or 150 x 110 cm works. Smaller sizes, from 50 x 40 cm upward, suit a hallway or an office, where the painting is seen from close to.

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. La Grenouillère 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: landscape, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 50 x 40 cm to 150 x 110 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: it was in landscape that Renoir went most freely at light, colour and the brushstroke, because the rendering of human figures did not occupy him

See also:

• Le Pont de Chatou
• Les Grands Boulevards
• Le Pont Neuf