Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey

Moulin Huet Bay – a wide shallow curve under an apricot sky

Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made around 1883. The original measures 29.2 x 54.0 cm, is catalogued as NG6204 and hangs in The National Gallery, London. Our art reproduction Moulin Huet Bay is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 90 x 50 to 175 x 97 cm.

The gallery’s own record explains what makes this one interesting. Renoir spent six weeks on Guernsey in 1883, and it was then that he began to move away from painting a landscape entirely in front of the motif, returning to the older discipline of an oil sketch made on the spot and a finished picture afterwards in the studio. This is one of those sketches: apparently the work of a single session, with the figures added while the paint of the sea was still wet.

The rock at the right-hand edge

A wide, shallow bay lies under a pale apricot sky. A large rock stack rises at the right, painted in dense strokes of blue, green, orange and red; smaller stacks stand further off at the left. Between them the sea runs in broad bands of blue-green and white. In the shallows at the centre a small group of bathers stands in the water – three close together, others scattered to the left – each made of only a few marks in blue, red and cream. The sand in the foreground is ochre flecked with blue and white foam.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The foam is indicated with quick dabs and simple wavy lines, while the rock is built from dense crossing loads of paint, and the figures are a handful of marks laid into a ground that is still wet. A hand-painted painting keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

The shape is markedly elongated, so the subject repays hanging above a sofa, a bed or a chest of drawers, where the wall is wider than it is tall and an ordinary painting would leave the sides bare. For a smaller space we advise 110 x 60 cm, for an open one 150 x 85 cm; above really long furniture 175 x 97 cm works, with 170 x 90 cm as the step before. Under 90 x 50 cm the rock merges into the shore and the bay loses its measure.

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. Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey 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: the wide Moulin Huet Bay with a rock, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 90 x 50 cm to 175 x 97 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the rock at the right-hand edge is the scene’s only vertical – it is against it that the width of the bay is measured

See also:

• Mont Sainte-Victoire
• View of Bougival
• Luncheon of the Boating Party