The Seine at Asnieres (The Skiff)

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The Seine at Asnieres (The Skiff): Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil Painting - The Seine at Asnieres (The Skiff)

Keywords: Seine, Asnieres, Skiff

Work Overview: The Seine at Asnieres (The Skiff)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Date: 1879
Style: Impressionism
Period: Association with Impressionists
Genre: landscape
Oil on canvas
71 x 92 cm

During the 1870s, Renoir painted several boating scenes on the Seine. The present painting probably shows the Seine at Chatou, to the west of Paris.

The term "Impressionism" is realty a misnomer for this type of painting. It was originally intended as a term of derision by academic minds, bewildered and antagonized by the sketchiness of the drawing, the shower of high-keyed brush strokes, the artless compositions, and the general feeling of evanescence. Yet lmpressionism~rs~anything but casual impression (as the picture Madame Monet Lying on a Sofa may be described); it is, as may be seen in the present plate, a thoroughgoing, concentrated analysis of luminosity in terms of color. Everything else in the painter's bag of tricks is ruthlessly sacrificed to this preoccupation. And far from being "formless," as many critics still maintain, what the Impressionists devised was a new artistic form, amazingly consistent in every element, every intention.

Renoir was not often as thoroughly Impressionist as he is here. Cezanne is supposed to have said of Monet, the arch-Impressionist, "He is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!" Renoir was too much in love with people and with nature to be "only an eye" for very long. He worked as an Impressionist when the occasion suggested it, and he became one of the greatest; but life had many other songs for him, and this accounts for the variety of style and subject we see in the plates preceding and following this one in our collection.

The exact setting for this picture has not been identified, but it probably shows the River Seine at Chatou, to the west of Paris. Renoir painted a number of 'open air' boating scenes on the Seine during the 1870s.

In this example, the orange hue of the skiff against the blue of the river exploits the use of complementary colours. Since blue and orange are opposites on the colour scale, they become more intense when they are juxtaposed.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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