Description
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Pont des Arts, Paris
| Year of creation: | 1867–1868 |
| Original size: | 60.9 cm x 100.3 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena |
The Pont des Arts, Paris is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1867–1868. The original measures 60.9 x 100.3 cm, is catalogued as F.1968.13.P and hangs in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. Our canvas wall art The Pont des Arts is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 90 x 55 to 175 x 110 cm.
The view runs wide along the Seine. At the left the Pont des Arts crosses the water on its slender iron arches, with a further bridge and the pale riverside facades beyond. At the right the dark green dome of the Institut de France rises above the trees and roofs. Along the sunlit quay in the foreground small figures walk in twos and threes – women in wide skirts, men in dark coats, a dog – each casting a long shadow across the pale stone. Barges and a landing stage lie along the left bank.
This is an early work: Renoir painted it at twenty-six, before the word Impressionism existed. That is part of its interest – the city is still built solidly and legibly, the architecture is exact, yet the light and the long shadows already lead the scene more than the drawing does. Renoir would return to the river again and again, most famously in the terrace of the Luncheon of the Boating Party.
Our version is not a print. The sky is laid in with broad, soft passes, while the figures on the quay are single tiny brushstrokes – a few marks each and nothing more. A hand-painted painting keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.
The strongly elongated format makes the subject useful above a sofa, a bed or a sideboard, where the wall is wider than it is tall. For a smaller wall 110 x 70 cm is enough; above a larger piece of furniture we recommend 150 x 90 cm. We paint to order, in a different size on request. Before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval. Your canvas wall art The Pont des Arts arrives ready to hang, with the canvas stretched on a wooden frame.
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