The Seine at Chatou

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Renoir renders this radiant landscape of the Seine just west of Paris with carefully differentiated brushwork, from the long, feathery strokes of the waving grasses to small, thick touches for the flowering trees. Renoir wrote to a friend at the time of the painting, “I’m struggling with trees in flower, with women and children, and I don’t want to look at anything else.”

painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Museum: Museum of Fine Arts)