La Grenouillère

Emily Thompson
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouiller, 1869

Renoir was not only influenced by the great painters before, such as Titian and Raphael, but also many of the artists with whom he spent a great deal of his time. Renoir was not married until he was 49 and used much of his free time with the "impressionist clique" of whom he was a part. Other members of the group whom Renoir was particularly close were Monet and Bazille. The three men frequently painted each other, and occasionally alongside each other. The men lived together and spent most of their time together, so it is not surprising that they sometimes chose the same scenes. One example of this similarity in scene is in La Grenouillère, painted here by Renoir and Monet. Though it appears the paintings were done at different times of day, with different arrangements of the boats, it is thought that the two set up their easels right next to each other when they painted these.
Claude Monet, Bain a la Grenouillere, 1869

The paintings epitomize what the Impressionists were trying to accomplish. Both paintings use blurred brush strokes to capture a moment in time, yet Renoir seems to focus on the clothes of the elite people enjoying a day on the river. Monet takes a different approach by focusing on the look of the water and boats. Though both paintings are of the same scene, Renoir’s seems cluttered and weighed down by the blue-green shade he used in the trees, while Monet’s scene seems to be a further out view of the same scene. Because of this, Monet shows the top of the tree line in the distance, which removes the feeling of weight to the viewer.

Though both paintings highlight different aspects of the scene, I prefer the Monet because it highlights the happy feeling the people on the lake are feeling during their afternoon of leisure. Renoir’s use of dark colors, though it fits with his blue motif, seems to give an unnecessarily dark feeling to the image that I don’t like.

  • 7:00 AM

The Duck Pond

Emily Thompson
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Duck Pond, 1873

After being drafted to fight in the war against Germany, Renoir went back to painting in 1871. Before Renoir solidified his go to subjects (city scenes, clothed women, and naked women), he spent some time exploring landscape throughout France. Some of the time Renoir spent exploring France was with his artist friends, yet this painting has no copies done by other artists. This painting can obviously be identified as one of Renoir's earlier works by its subject and the brushstrokes. The stokes are short and choppy, creating an image that seems natural. The movement Renoir gave to the plants and to the water truly gives the impression of a moment being captured in its raw state. As Renoir's career matured, he transitioned to capturing people, and his scenes became less natural.

I think the first thing that drew me to this painting was the colors. I liked the vibrant orange roof and how it contrasted with the dark blue Renoir scattered in the water. The blue is important because it gives an early glimpse at something that Renoir would one day become well known for. I like that the ducks grabbed my attention, yet faded into the background once I noticed the movement of the landscape surrounding them. The line of the ducks grabs the viewers attention, pushing the eyes to the middle of the painting and changing the focus to the movement of the trees.

  • 7:00 AM

Young Boy With Cat

Arsam Yazdani
Young Boy With Cat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1868

After browsing through many of Renoir’s works, I originally thought this piece had been attributed to him by mistake. By far the strangest looking piece I have seen, especially by him, it resembles none of his previous works, yet tells the most about the artist. It is striking, glowing with purity and beauty while the highly sexualized scene is diffused by the presence of the lone feline.

The sexuality of this piece reaches out and grabs your attention, his posture and gaze almost trap the viewer. It’s refreshingly intense. In the Baroque style, the similarities between Young Boy with Cat and Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit are striking. The highly-eroticised figure bears a basket of fruit while fixating on the viewer with the same mischievous stare. The tension in the stance, the lighting on the body, so similar to the provocative nature of Caravaggio’s boy displaying his bare shoulders. For an “Impressionist” painting, this piece is painted in great detail, especially the pattern of the sheet is incredibly fine and skillful, demonstrating a disciplined stroke.

The lewd tension in this piece is inescapable, but what does the cat in his arms suggest? Looking to other pieces, cats are symbolic of piety and cleanliness, often times the presence of nature and mystery. The pale, stylistic affectation of the boy comes from Renoir sharing a studio with Frederic Bazille, and his obsession with Edouard Manet. The diverse masculinity found in Renoir’s other works is absent here, giving a glimpse into Renoir’s private life with Bazille, that privacy embodied by the cat. Shortly after this piece emerged, Renoir was forced to become a more serious artist after the birth of his first child, leaving this piece - and its meaning - in his past.

  • 7:00 AM

La Promenade

Drew Bierwirth
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Promenade, 1870

It's a fleeting moment.

Even the technique itself seems blurred, the motion of the piece drawing the viewer up the hill with the lovers. The leaves around them mix into their clothing, making it difficult to discern where the bodies end and nature begins. They dissolve into their surroundings, with the nature around them just as important as their journey up the hill. Renoir draws all attention directly towards the woman. Her companion fades into the greenery, the angle of his body only serving to direct the movement of the piece. She glows through the stretching branches and leaves, the white of her dress striking the viewer immediately. The most important part of this to me is her face. It is lit up as if by its own private sun, her expression gently coy as if she's trying to make her companion think she's shy or even nonchalant about their little climb.

It is such an approachable piece, one where you can almost hear their footsteps on the ground, bodies pushing past crinkly leaves and feet snapping branches. Renoir exhibits an amazing ability to create an entire scene with his work, from the part that can be viewed to the part the viewer can feel, smell, and hear in their own minds. In many other Impressionist pieces, the work is beautiful and moving but also very confined. Here, the piece extends beyond its boundaries and encourages the viewer to look beyond their own as well.

  • 7:00 AM

Landscape Near Menton - Midsummer's Night Dream

Emma Krasnopoler

Pierre Auguste Renoir, Landscape Near Menton, 1883

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
--William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Oberon describes the Fairy Queen Titania's bower, where she sleeps.

At first glace, Renoir’s Landscape Near Menton is a calm, picturesque bank, much like Queen Titania’s in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, much like Midsummer, nothing is really as it seems. The violent brushstrokes give the painting a frenzied sense of movement. Wind whips through the turbulent grasses, flowers bend against their will, even the way the colors seem to crash against each other in a permanent state of agitation. The dark blues, greens, and blacks rebel against their pastel counterparts. This painting lives in polarity, constantly contradicting itself. A typically placid view suddenly transforms into a colossal mess.

And that brings us to Midsummer, the love story gone so wrong, it’s actually right. Midsummer admits that love is tumultuous, chaotic even. Throughout the whole play, Shakespeare mocks the concept of true love. He plays games with the actors and the audience and leaves both groups helpless against his will. The play moves swiftly, but leaves us unsettled. It never progresses, just wavers back and forth for three acts, a whirlwind of plot, until finally Shakespeare gives us the happy ending we were hoping for.  Like Landscape Near Menton, Midsummer is not static. We like to think we know what we are seeing, be it a love story or a landscape, but we probably don’t. I chose Landscape Near Menton because I thought it portrayed Titania’s bower, but it did so much more. The painting is the essence of the play: a pretty picture full of chaos, making you appreciate it so much more once you realize you didn’t understand it at all.

  • 3:09 PM

Haut Boys: Luncheon of the Boating Party

1881
The Haut Boys
The Audition for the Newest Art History Boy Band – The Haut Boys
Curated by Susie Xu


Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

Clearly a much different style of clothing and portrayal of characters, Luncheon with the Boating Party brings about a vastly different style of art. The New Impressionist Movement brings a mixture of realism with a hint of artistic qualities.

Instead of focusing on one man, we’re instead looking at the three prominent men at the foreground of the painting. All three men are well proportioned and well built – sun’s out, guns out! The bushy beard on the left is an asset to be applauded for. Maintaining the hair is a difficult task, as I hear. We also have the debonair man on the right, leaning in to talk to the woman in blue. Clearly he’s a suave man, able to handle the ladies – or lady in this case. That’s a bonus. The ginger man on the bottom right however, seems a little lacking. He can’t even properly sit in his chair correctly, not to mention that he’s staring in an unamused manner towards something.

Renoir does a fantastic job painting layers in his art, giving each masterpiece a sense of reality and space. This one in particular, the people and the food perfectly set on the table continuously layer further and further, the background full of people, but without the messy and chaotic feel. 

Overall, though each man has his positives, they’re just slightly too mediocre. Nothing about them particularly stand out, though the painting itself, as a whole does. So with heavy hearts, we vote to reject all candidates in this painting.

So in all, if one must take something out of this influx of "Haut Boys," it's that we appreciate fine art and fine boys. 

  • 7:00 AM

Figures on Beach

Bear Lake
Auguste Renoir, Figures on Beach, 1890
Lucky people, like myself, get the opportunity to escape. Runaway from the textbooks, emails, essays, and worksheets. I am truly thankful for the gift of running away. This summer I took a break from work and set my sights on a wonderful surprise vacation to Michigan. There, I was going to stay at my favorite Uncle Sam's at Bear Lake with my cousins. Now, I love my immediate family, don't get me wrong, but going just for me was pretty awesome. I adore my cousins and sometimes I need a little Natalie time, so getting both meant it was a guaranteed blast.

Bear lake has all of the essentials for a great time, and none of the annoying crowds of people to ruin it. The small body of water is man-made, same with most of the 1,200 lakes in Michigan, but this one seemed especially created for my family. The lake has a few rules though: No gas powered water vehicles before 11 a.m. and nothing past 9 p.m., all boats must go in the same direction around the lake, and no more building houses (that last one really doesn't matter much, but it's still a rule). The 11a.m. take off time allowed for some long hours of well deserved sleep, and the boats cruising in the same direction flowed like a carousel rotating to the sound of the waves crashing on the dock.

My personal favorite activity, tubing, became our source of exercise for the day. We managed to break the rope, flip over twice, and give my cousin some serious whiplash. All was in good fun, and worth the soreness that morning brought from our battle scars with the water. The trip itself did its job perfectly, relaxing my mind and giving me time to breathe and take in summer at its best. Bear Lake did one more thing for me though, it made me thankful for my family and for leisure time. I would not be thankful for the gift of running away if it was a normal pass time, but the time I get once a year to throw up my hands say the hell with it all and jump in the water, is well worth it. I am one lucky girl, who has a family willing to drive their boats far over the speed limit for me and my cousin's enjoyment, and for that I am thankful.     

  • 7:00 AM

Umbrellas - Umbrellas

Impressionism
Umbrellas
Curated by Max Cantu-Lima
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Umbrellas, 1880-1886

 In the 19th century, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted Umbrellas in two phases.The scene displays people caught in the in-between of departure and arrival, hiding under their umbrellas to avoid collisions.  Largely consisting of blues and greys, the painting contains Renoir's impressionistic style of loose brush strokes. The second phase of the composition took place in 1885 when Renoir went through a midlife crisis of sort. Beginning to evaluate himself and his style, Renoir looked back to classical art, specifically Ingres.

Returning to the painting, he adjusted the main woman on the left. He removed her look of hated and altered the dress and painted with muted colors - creating a more simple, working-class style than she had before. Her face, along with the child and women to her right, display Renoir’s ability to paint within the classical, detailed style.

Through the umbrellas, the hoop, and the basket, Renoir creates circular movements throughout the composition. The umbrellas positioned in ways far from impressionism, form a linear pattern. Having visited with Cezanne in 1882, the tree in the back ground could very well contain traces of his influence.
The painting thus has a conflicting merging of styles. The on-going impressionists and the classical art that preceded them, forms a busy and, at first appearance, a complex piece of art.

  • 8:00 AM

Progression of Human Form - On the Terrace

On the Terrace
Progression of Human Form
Curated by Shahzad Aslam

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, On the Terrace, 1881
Renoir, known for glorifying female sensuality and femininity represents an impressionist style painter. For impressionists like Renoir, the beauty of the female form was accentuated through vibrant colors and less emphasis on line and contour unlike the romantics and others that came before them. The vibrancy in On the Terrace is achieved through the separate application of each color of paint and non-mixing or blending of the paints on the canvas. Furthermore, the work is characteristic of the Impressionist period, as it set outdoors with an ordinary mother and daughter as the subject. Additionally, the background and foreground containing the figures are blended seamlessly together creating a snapshot, photographic effect. The forms of the females at this time are still traditional and painted accurately. The differentiating factor in Impressionism comes from the application of the paint through thin, open brush strokes and subject matter rather than a reinvention of the human form.

  • 12:00 AM

Dance at Le moulin de la Galette

Dance at Moulin de la Galette
Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876
August Renoir's Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette depicts a cheerful scene of a typical sunday afternoon in Paris. Once a week, working class people would dress up and gather at Le Moulin de la Galette to drink, dance, socialize and eat galettes. Interestingly, the figures in the painting were not actual attendees, instead Renoir created portraits of his friends, with the occasional professional model thrown in.

Compositionally, the painting is chaotically crowded. From the foreground all the way to the back of the painting, there appears to be an endless amount of people. The only points of relief from the mass of humanity are near the dancing couple on the left, and the space above the heads in the distance at the very top which occupies one fifth of the painting. Every visible face bears an expression of merriment, which, in conjunction with warm lighting creates an instant sensation of joviality, even upon first glance. The sunlight appears patchy, and creates somewhat of a polka dot pattern on several individuals in the foreground. The couple on the left seem to have found a large patch of sun, creating a spotlight effect. Renoir's ability to turn such a quant get-together into a painting full of emotional surprises make him one of the most celebrated impressionist artists.
  • 12:00 AM