Pierre-Auguste Renoir – La Promenade

La Promenade – a hand pulling up the bank

La Promenade is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1870. The original measures 81.3 x 64.8 cm, is recorded under inventory number 89.PA.41 and belongs to the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Our canvas wall art La Promenade is a hand-painted painting in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 65 x 80 to 140 x 170 cm.

The green that closes over them both

A young man in a dark jacket and straw hat leans back and reaches for the hand of a young woman to draw her up the bank. She wears a long white dress with a blue sash and a flowered bonnet. The green almost swallows them: foliage fills the whole canvas, and the light breaks through it in small yellow and blue patches. The scene is caught in movement rather than in a pose.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. In this subject the difference is easy to see: the dense leaves are made of hundreds of individual strokes of oil colour laid side by side with a brush, and the white dress of thicker, softer ones. The paint keeps the thickness of the load and the track of the bristles, which printed paper cannot imitate, so an oil painting on canvas reads differently under changing light than a flat printed surface does.

In the room

The subject is green and bright, without a sharp centre, so in a room it works as an impression of a garden rather than a scene demanding attention: it stands well in a living room, a bedroom or on a staircase. Because the foliage fills almost the whole surface and closes over both figures, the painting does not open depth but shuts it, and that is exactly why it settles a wall instead of stretching it. On a smaller wall 80 x 100 cm suffices, while above a wider piece of furniture 100 x 120 cm sits better, and on a tall wall 130 x 160 cm works. In between sit 90 x 110 and 100 x 130 cm. Under 65 x 80 cm the hands of the two figures stop being distinguishable and the gesture the scene rests on disappears.

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 Promenade 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: young couple on a bank among greenery, the man pulling the woman up, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 65 x 80 cm to 140 x 170 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the whole scene rests on one gesture – a hand reaching for another to pull it up

See also:

• The Swing (La Balançoire)
• Dance in the Country
• The Umbrellas