Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cla
ude Monet, Bain à la Grenouillère, 1869
In the summer of 1869 Monet was living in conditions of extreme hardship with his family at Saint-Michel,
a hamlet near Bougival, west of Paris. The two works he had submitted to the Paris Salon that year (The
Magpie and Fishing Boats at Sea) had been rejected, and he was keen to paint a ‘tableau’ (living picture) to
submit to the Salon in 1870 that might find fresh mass appeal.
Renoir, also desperately poor at the time, was staying in the vicinity with his parents, and he and Monet
painted together at La Grenouillére (The Frog Pond) a popular meeting place on the Seine river near
Bougival, which was easily accessible by train. Here people met to swim, dance and drink.
The restaurant at La Grenouillére, which was located on a barge, was a fashionable place for the emerging
middle class to enjoy the new pleasures of suburban Paris. The small island next to the restaurant, with a
weeping willow at its centre, was known as Pot de fluers (flowerpot) or ‘the camembert‘. Accessible by
gang planks, people would meet and talk before progressing to the bar of La Grenouillére.
The name La Grenouillére was based on its double meaning. It’s not only the French term for frog pond,
but it was also used colloquially to describe women who were, as Renoir’s son in his memoir of his
father put it, “not exactly prostitutes, but a class of unattached young women, characteristic of the Parisian
scene [at the time], changing lovers easily, satisfying any whim, going nonchalantly from a mansion on the
Champs-Elyseés to a garret in the Batignolles“.
He continued, “Among that group Renoir got a great many of his volunteer models. According to him, the
grenouilles, or ‘frogs’ were often ‘very good sorts’. Because the French people love a medley of classes,
actresses, society women and respectable middle-class also patronised the… restaurant”.
August Renoir, La
Grenouillère, 1869
Both Monet and Renoir were living a ‘hand to mouth existence’. Monet would literally paint until he ran
out of colour, then take up sketching in preparation for the next time he could pull together a few francs
from his friends in order to continue. Renoir was being supported by his family. Thankfully the owner of
La Grenouillére, Monsieur Fournaise, accepted some of their paintings in exchange for food.
They painted scenes of boats and swimmers and of couples strolling along the water’s edge or crossing the
gangplanks. Painting many views of the same scene quickly, they captured the changes in light and
atmosphere as the day progressed. In their surviving works from that summer, it is clear that they usually
painted alongside each other.
In experimenting with techniques for painting outdoors, they developed a method for capturing the play of
light on water. They painted rapidly with short, comma like brushstrokes, and they juxtaposed sharply
contrasting, unmixed colours which brought a shimmering life to water. It enabled them to portray the
transitory effects of light and atmosphere – goals they had been pursuing for years. Both came to value the
sketchy, unfinished quality of the work.
Renoir’s paintings
DETAILS FROM RENOIR’S PAINTINGS
Renoir painted huddles of people on the camembert, experimenting with little patches or taches (French for
‘spots’) which were indistinct wiggling strokes which he applied by putting one mark next to another,
creating subtle colour variations. He also dashed off bright white impasto (thick paint straight out of the
tube) across the water, suggesting reflections of bright light and the movement of the water created by the
bathers and the boats.
Monet’s Paintings
(It’s considered that the lost painting of La Grenouillére, photographed above, was his ‘tableau’ which he
submitted to the Salon in 1870, but was rejected.)
(See more information about Monet’s painting techniques and his use of complementary colours in the free
trial section of my e-course.)
(Also, you’ll find detailed information about 19th Century Painting Inventions and how they influenced
the painting style of Monet, and other Impressionists, in the full e-course.)