''By the Seashore'' is a painting by
Pierre-Auguste Renoir completed in 1883 and is now housed in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
.
History
Renoir made a trip to
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
in 1881-82 and was deeply influenced by
Renaissance art
Renaissance art (1350 – 1620 AD) is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occ ...
. After this trip he began to explore a new manner of painting, different from
impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
. He started to emphasize contours and modeling, abandoned the principle that scenes should be painted outdoors to capture light and atmosphere.
Late in the summer of 1883, Renoir spent about a month in
St. Peter Port
St. Peter Port (french: Saint-Pierre Port) is a town and one of the ten parishes on the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. It is the capital of the Bailiwick of Guernsey as well as the main port. The population in 2019 was 18,958.
St. P ...
, the capital of
Guernsey, and admired the rocks, cliffs and stunning view of
Moulin Huet Bay in
St. Martin. He painted the starts of fifteen pictures during his stay, most of which were finished later in his
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
studio. Guernsey lies 48 km off the coast of mainland Normandy. Both share the same geology and Guernsey fulfills the "by the sea" criterion in the exhibition title.
However, ''By the Seashore'' is thought to have been painted in the artist's studio.
The beach depicted here is probably not in the Channel Islands but near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast. The model was
Aline Charigot, his then girlfriend, whom he married in 1890.
The arc of the sitter's dark eyebrows and saucily tilted nose in that pleasant, rosy-cheeked face are common to works by Renoir.
By the Seashore proto-typically reflects this period in Renoir's art. He worked with small compositions in the field that he then pulled together in more elaborate, larger works while in his studio. He was also playing with the disparity of space and scale between figure and background at this time.
Provenance
The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan since 1929 from the bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer.
See also
*
List of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
This is an incomplete list of paintings by Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir painted about 4000 paintings that have sold at auction for as much as $78.1 million (in 1990). The largest collection of Renoir paintings is at the Barn ...
References
Sources
* The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (information table beside the painting)
{{ACArt
Paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1883 paintings
Culture of Guernsey
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Water in art
Ships in art