The Grands Boulevards

English

The Grands Boulevards: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Price: Price on Request
Art Type: Oil Painting
Size:
English Comments: 0
International Comments: 0
Creating Date:
Introduction and Works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir >>

Contemporary-Art.org

Reproduction

Enlarge

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil Painting - The Grands Boulevards

Keywords: Grands, Boulevards

Work Overview: The Grands Boulevards
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Alternative name: The Grands Boulevards
Date: 1875
Dimensions: 20 1/2 x 25 inches (52.1 x 63.5 cm)
Style: Impressionism
Period: Association with Impressionists
Genre: cityscape
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, US

The Grands Boulevards is an oil painting that was painted in 1875 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The painting illustrates a busy Paris boulevard showing the effects of industrialization and Haussmannization. The image is today housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Grands Boulevards illustrates the Haussmannization of Paris through the wide, paved street, and the large concrete building to the right of the painting. The Boulevard is teeming with life; not only does the painting illustrate all classes, but it emphasizes the flâneurs. Renoir’s emphasis moves away from the human figure and towards how lighting affects the image. The painting shows the clothes worn by the people on the boulevard in detail, from which their social class can be inferred, but their individuality is hidden because Renoir chooses not to show any details of their faces. His focus is on the effect of sunshine on the buildings and trees. The painting shows great detail in the shadows created by the sun shining on the trees, and also the shadows created by the people as well as the horse-drawn carriage. Throughout the painting it is evident that Renoir was influenced by impressionism.[1] The characteristics of impressionism that can be seen in Renoir’s work are short brush strokes and a seemingly out of focus view.

Perhaps Renoir's most famous view of Paris is this archetypical image of its newest and most fashionable district in the 1870s. The Grands Boulevards is full of the pigment daubs and bright colors that are characteristic of Impressionism. The modern life in the city is transmitted through visible strokes of paint, which operate as immediate sensory cues that allow the viewer to perceive this world as though it is passing by. This is the magic of Renoir's Paris. The world of the painting is truly historical--the modern city emerging--even though his translation of this place is a subjective and fleeting impression.

While many of the greatest Impressionist paintings of the 1870s by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his contemporaries are festive scenes of suburban or rural sociability, the city, particularly Paris, also provided a constant source of vibrant motifs. In this painting, executed the year after the first Impressionist exhibition was held in Paris, Renoir depicts one of the so-called grands boulevards cutting through the heart of the city. These broad new avenues lined with uniform--some thought monotonous--stone facades had been built in the 1850s and 1860s by the town-planner Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, and they transformed Paris into a modern metropolis. Renoir clearly relishes the contemporary bustle, filling his canvas with traffic and commerce and lively, hurried sociability, all unified by the shimmering play of light filtering down through the treetops. Christopher Riopelle, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 196.

Copyright Statement:
All the reproduction of any forms about this work unauthorized by Singing Palette including images, texts and so on will be deemed to be violating the Copyright Laws.
To cite this webpage, please link back here.

>> English Comments >> Chinese Comments >> French Comments >> German Comments >>Report

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Work Overview