Title: La Promenade

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

La Promenade1870 Pierre-Auguste RenoirFrench, Limoges 1841–Cagnes-sur-Mer 1919 Oil on canvas Themes of romantic dalliance and courtship often appear in Renoir’s unapologetically sensual art. Here a young man, holding back the undergrowth in a show of gallantry, leads a fashionable young woman into the shaded privacy of a wood. Brilliantly conveying the dappled effect of sunlight filtered through foliage, this painting is among the first in which Renoir depicted large-scale figures in an outdoor setting with the flickering, broken brushstrokes of the new Impressionist technique, which he had been developing in close dialogue with fellow painter Claude Monet.