Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Regatta at Argenteuil Tile

Regatta at Argenteuil (Régates à Argenteuil), 1874 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, oil on canvas. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Limoges, 1841 - Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919) was a French Impressionist painter. Argenteuil was one of the main boating centres near Paris and a key location for the emerging Impressionist group. Renoir worked there alongside Claude Monet in the summer of 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, and the experience revived his interest in leisure on the river. Sailboats line a grassy riverbank while about a dozen spectators, each suggested with a few strokes, stand in the grass. Water and sky are so thinly painted that the canvas shows through in places, in a small, rapid study of reflected light. The painting links the new leisure culture of the Seine directly with the visual language of early Impressionism.