the play of light and shadow, the brilliance of sun and water, summer and youth …

2. summer of 1869 …
Monet and Renoir set up their easels in the same place

3. Monet and Renoir paint Camembert …
a small island planted with a single tree, linked by gangplanks
to the Île de la Grenouillère.
…
the reflections of trees,
people,
sky in the rippling water
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
La Grenouillère
1869
Nationalmuseum de Stockholm

5. La Grenouillère, a slightly raffish resort on the river Seine
some 12 km west of Paris.
It had become a popular weekend retreat from the city during
the 1860s.
…
Fast, sharp, brilliant and vibrant, with brushstrokes detached
from each other but capturing the ephemerality of nature,
stunning and transient moments illuminated by carefully
placed strokes of colour creating a magnificent contrast
vivid and breath-taking to the eye, and relishing to the soul.
Claude Monet
Bain à la Grenouillère
La Grenouillère
1869
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

7. the play of light and shadow,
the brilliance of sun and water, summer and youth …

8. Monet, Renoir ... and Caillebotte, Bazille or Morisot ...

9. The pleasures of the open air
in Impressionist Masterpieces

10. The beauty of a sunny day at the beach ...
On a bay ringed by cliffs, fashionable young Parisians
enjoy the sun and sea.
Interestingly, Renoir did not create this masterpiece en plein air
but rather from studies he made of the beach and sea during
his stay on the Channel.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Enfants au bord de la mer, Guernesey
Children on the Seashore, Guernsey
1883
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia and Merion, PA

13. A summer’s day on the river …
the river Seine,
fashionably dressed women
a rowing boat,
a sailboat
and
a steam train crossing a bridge
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Canotage sur la Seine, La Seine à Asnières, dit La Yole
The Skiff
1875
National Gallery, London

16. The brilliance of sun and water, summer and youth ...
The woman is Aline Charigot, who became Renoir's wife
and was a favorite model,
beside her is Edmond, the painter's brother.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Les Canotiers à Chatou
Oarsmen at Chatou
1879
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

19. The play of light and shade ...
Camille and Madame Boudin shade their faces with parasols.
Grains of sand embedded in the paint reveal that the canvas
was painted at least partly on the spot.
Claude Monet
La plage de Trouville
The Beach at Trouville
1870
The National Gallery, London

22. Suzanne and Blanche, two of Mrs. Hoschedé's children.
The blue and rose
and
the freshness of green and vermilion.
…
The composition of boldly slicing the boat in half indicates
Monet's study of the art of photography and Japanese ukiyoe prints.
Claude Monet
Sur le bateau. Jeunes filles en barque
On the Boat. Young Girls in a Row Boat
1887
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

25. An indefinable melancholic feel ...
Suzanne, protected against the sun and the wind by a muslin veil,
is absorbed in her book.
Eugène, the painter's brother and soon to be the husband
of Berthe Morisot, is gazing out to sea, lying in the same position
as ten years earlier in Lunch on the Grass.
They turn their backs to the spectator and seem to be immersed
in their own personal universe.
…
(The blacks and greys usually banned from the Impressionist palette.
Is considered to be one of Manet's paintings in which the Japanese
influence.)
Édouard Manet
Sur la plage
On the Beach
1873
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

28. A magical picture ...
a woman catching butterflies with her children.
…
An elegant young woman holds out a ratchet to catch flying butterflies.
The kids do not seem to comprehend what's up as they do not look like
they are assisting her in catching the butterflies.
Berthe Morisot
Chasse aux papillons
The Butterfly Hunt
1874
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

31. The Bois de Boulogne,
a sunny scene by the water ...
a carriage with its horses speeding past,
ducks
and
two fashionably dressed young women took their places
in a rowing boat.
Morisot painted Summer Day in his typical impressionist style.
Berthe Morisot
Jour d’été
Summer's Day
1879
National Gallery, London

34. The fashionable woman seated in the foreground is the artist's sister, Edma.
However, it is neither a scene nor a frozen portrait,
but an impression that is immortalized on the canvas.
We breathe fresh air, we bathe in light.
The painting resounds with a feeling of freshness, vibrancy and delicate charm.
Berthe Morisot
Reading (The Green Umbrella)
La Lecture
1873
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

37. A fashionable tourist destination...
men and women,
the painter Charles Landelle wearing a cap,
the young Guy de Maupassant preparing to dive
as for the beautiful lady with her crinoline dress,
it is Mademoiselle Eugénie Doche,
Belgian actress famous for having played the role
of Marguerite Gautier in La dame aux camélias.
Eugène Le Poittevin
La Baignade à Étretat ou Bains de mer d'Étretat
Bathing Étretat Beach
1860
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Troyes

40. A panoramic format that is astonishing in its originality
a throng of figures enjoying themselves
bathers, fashionable women in crinolines, well-dressed men
the splendid still life of heaped clothes and belongings,
the lobster pots
and
an extra dimension, a more social and personal angle,
actual portraits of people close to the artist:
the bearded man in the center may well be the painter Charles Landelle,
the other elegant bearded man reading his newspaper, is the illustrator
and caricaturist Bertall
and ...
the skinny, lanky young man among the bathers, just after he has emerged
from the sea, in a black bathing costume, wearing a cap, stooping and
shivering from the cold waters of the Channel ....
Guy de Maupassant Le Poittevin’s great-nephew.
Eugène Le Poittevin
Les Bains de Mer, Plage d’Etretat
Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat
1864
Private collection

43. A summer day ...
the women contemplating the surface of the water.
Mary Cassatt liked, as a good impressionist, to work outside,
"on the motif" as Cézanne said.
Mary Cassatt
L'été
Summertime
1894
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago

45. Parisian high society on holiday ...
Two women on the shore watching the bathers.
Ernest-Ange Duez
L'heure du bain au bord de la mer (Villerville)
Bathing time at the seaside
1894
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen

48. A small masterpiece …
a vast and luminous beach-and-seascape.
Le Tréport, a fashionable summer resort for Parisians
on the Normandy coast.
Croquet was au currant, enjoying a resurgence in popularity
in France at the time.
Louise Abbéma
Partie de croquet sur la plage du Le Tréport
A game of Croquet
1872
Private Collection

50. Young men having a leisurely day, along the banks of Lez river
near Montpellier.
Bazille began this composition in his Paris studio but completed
the details of the landscape after traveling to the south of France.
…
What is arresting in this picture by a painter of 27 years old,
is its view of life and of man, and its determination to rediscover
the figurative values of the prominent Renaissance painters,
notably Andrea Mantegna and Sebastiano del Piombo
in modern everyday life.
The man leaning against the tree at left resembles a St Sebastian,
the helpfulness of the man at right may recall Christ
helping the damned up out of purgatory.
Frédéric Bazille
Scène d'été, Les Baigneurs
Summer Scene, Bathers
1869
Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge

53. A sandy beach,
parasols
women in long dresses with wide skirts,
men in top hats and black suits,
two children with straw hats,
two dogs
sailboats floating in the ocean,
one boat a puffs a plume of gray smoke,
pale white clouds,
light blue sky
It was Boudin who was to become Claude Monet's first teacher,
persuading him to paint in the plein-air, since, ‘nature is truly seen
in all its variety and freshness’ (Boudin).
Eugène-Louis Boudin
Scène de plage à Trouville
Beach scene at Trouville
1863
National Gallery of Art, Washington

56. Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla.
Sorolla's talent for showing the most moving
element possible:
water ...
always in movement, with transparency, reflections,
reverberations.
Joaquín Sorolla
The Bathing Hour, Valencia
L’heure du bain, Valence
1909
Museum Sorolla, Madrid

58. The breeze is perceived through the undulating dresses ...
Sorolla's wife Clotilde and his eldest daughter Maria
strolling along the seashore.
The luminist painter manages to capture a precise moment,
the colors, the light, the sea breeze ...
To do this, he borrows the technique of the Impressionists,
uses a particularly luminous white and chooses
an unusual framing.
Joaquín Sorolla
Walk on the Beach
Promenade au bord de la mer
1909
Museo Sorolla, Madrid

60. Some men paddle their skiffs along a wooded river …
A study in rippled reflections, bright ochre paddles,
and watery greens and blues.
Caillebotte was not only a patron of Impressionism,
but shows that he was one of its Masters too.
Gustave Caillebotte
Périssoires sur l’Yerres
Skiffs on the Yerres or Flat-Bottom Canoes on the Yerres
1877
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

63. In 1877 and 1878, Gustave Caillebotte made a number of pictures of swimmers,
oarsmen and rowers near his family’s estate in Yerres, a small town southeast
of Paris that had already attracted the artistic attentions of Édouard Manet
and Claude Monet.
Participant in the Impressionist exhibitions, Caillebotte was clearly drawn
to a subject that enabled him to experiment with the fleeting effects
of rippling water and reflected light.
Gustave Caillebotte
Périssoires
Canoeing
1878
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes

66. o.esqsegues@gmail.com
The pleasures of the open air in Impressionist Masterpieces
Les plaisirs du plein air en chefs-d’œuvre impressionnistes
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