Description
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Umbrellas
| Year of creation: | about 1881–1886 |
| Original size: | 180.3 cm x 114.9 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | National Gallery, London – Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, 1917, in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin |
The Umbrellas is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made about 1881–1886. The original measures 180.3 x 114.9 cm, is recorded under inventory number NG3268 and is held by the National Gallery in London as the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest of 1917, in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Our canvas wall art The Umbrellas is a hand-painted painting in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 60 x 90 to 130 x 200 cm.
The upper half of the canvas is filled with grey-blue umbrellas. At the lower left a young woman stands bareheaded in a grey-blue dress, a pale wicker bandbox over her arm, looking straight out at us; a woman is seen in profile at the centre, and at the right a mother stands with her two daughters, the younger holding a hoop. The work was made in two stages and two different manners can be seen in it: the group on the right and the woman in profile belong to the first, and Renoir finished the canvas for a major exhibition that opened in New York in April 1886.
Our version is not a print. In this work the difference is easy to see: the almost monochrome grey-blue range lives on the smallest differences of tone, which come from 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.
The cool, blue subject without strong contrasts works well in a living room, an office, or a reception area, where the large format carries from a distance. For a smaller wall 80 x 120 cm is enough; for an open space we recommend 100 x 150 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 canvas wall art The Umbrellas arrives ready to hang, stretched on a wooden frame.
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