Tote Bag - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Seine at Chatou

Lined tote bag with internal pocket
Exclusive to the NGV design store

Painted in Renoir’s signature fluttering brushwork, this picture offers a quintessential expression of his high Impressionist style. This springtime view of Chatou, a boating spot in the Paris suburbs, quivers in a profusion of colour and light. Delicate wisps of green and yellow suggest a breeze in the grass; a crowd of white and pink flecks, a flowering tree. Renoir portrays a young girl gathering flowers in the same carefree manner as he does her lush surroundings. The predominance of complementary yellow/greens and lilacs here may reflect the colour theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul from the 1850s – namely that neighbouring colours influence one another’s appearance.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
French
The Seine at Chatou (detail), 1881
Oil on canvas
73.3 x 92.4 cm
Gift of Arthur Brewster Emmons
19.771
Reproduced with permission.
©2021, Museum of Fine Arts Boston