Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Umbrellas

The Umbrellas – a grey-blue area filling the upper half

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.

A woman without a hat, looking straight at us

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.

Why hand-painted, not a print

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.

In the room

The subject is cool and blue, without strong contrasts, and in a room it works more like a quiet area of colour than a scene that pulls at you: it stands well in a living room, an office, or a reception space. The format is tall and narrow and the scene is dense, so the painting asks for distance – the umbrellas at the top read as a single surface from close to, and only separate from a few steps back. For a smaller wall 80 x 120 cm is enough, for an open space we suggest 100 x 150 cm, and on a tall wall 120 x 190 cm works.

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 Umbrellas 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: crowd beneath grey-blue umbrellas, with a woman and a woven basket in the foreground, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 60 x 90 cm to 130 x 200 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the woman at lower left is the only one looking straight at the viewer – the others look past one another

See also:

• The Swing (La Balançoire)
• Girls at the Piano
• La Loge (The Theatre Box)