Description
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Swing (La Balançoire)
| Year of creation: | 1876 |
| Original size: | 92.0 cm x 73.0 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Musée d’Orsay, Paris |
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.
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.
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.
The bright, green subject with its warm white centre works well in a living room, on a staircase, or in a room with wooden furniture, where it brings the impression of a garden. For a smaller wall 80 x 100 cm is enough; above a larger piece of furniture we recommend 100 x 120 cm.
We paint to order, and in other sizes on request. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval. Every hand-painted painting The Swing arrives ready to hang, stretched on a wooden frame.
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