Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Swing (La Balançoire)

The Swing – a white dress under scattered light

The Swing (La Balançoire) is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1876. The original measures 92.0 x 73.0 cm, is recorded under inventory number RF 2738 and belongs to the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Our hand-painted painting The Swing is made in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 65 x 80 to 140 x 170 cm.

Patches of sun falling on the dress and the ground

A young woman in a white dress trimmed with blue bows stands on the swing, one hand on the rope and her head turned aside. In front of her a man in a straw hat and blue jacket stands with his back to us; a second, bearded man leans against the tree, and at the lower left a small girl in a straw hat looks out of the picture. Sunlight comes through the leaves and breaks the ground and the dress into violet-blue and yellow patches, and that scattered light is the real subject of the work.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. In this subject the difference is easy to see: the patches of light are not a printed screen but individual strokes of oil colour, laid side by side with a brush. 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 light and green, with a warm white at its centre, and in a room it works like an open window onto a garden: it stands well in a living room, on a staircase, or where wooden furniture dominates, which the green agrees with. Because the light is scattered and never turns hard anywhere, the painting asks for no particular lighting and takes a wall that is not directly lit. For a smaller wall 80 x 100 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 100 x 120 cm, and on a tall wall 130 x 160 cm works. Below 65 x 80 cm the patches of sun on the dress merge into the white and the scene loses its main feature.

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. The Swing (La Balançoire) 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 woman on a swing, in a white dress with blue bows, 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 patches of sun on the dress are not decoration but the real subject – they are why the canvas was then thought unfinished

See also:

• La Loge (The Theatre Box)
• Mother Anthony’s Tavern
• The Large Bathers