La Grenouillère
Dublin Core
Title
La Grenouillère
Subject
Upper-class leisure: enabled by the suburbs and absent of industry
Description
Monet employs a very traditional impressionist technique to a lively scene of La Grenouillère, a boating and bathing resort on the Seine near Bougival. In fact, depictions of La Grenouillère are considered to be the defining works in the canon of impressionism, “landmarks both in the development of the impressionist style of painting, and the genre of depiction of everyday life and leisure” (Fallone 46). Nonetheless, La Grenouillère was a place where one could be fully immersed in the pleasures of leisure whether it be bathing, boating, or dining out in the country. Monet depicts carefree middle and upper-class individuals on a platform and bungalow in the water. Some are swimming and engaging with those on the platform. Unattended boats are docked in the foreground. The scene is calm and inviting. The loose painting style utilized is meant to complement the nonchalant, relaxed nature of leisure in a serene setting.
It is important to note that these individuals pictured are likely “tourists” seeking the simple pleasures of a “riverside paradise,” offered only by the suburbs. These are probably Parisians visiting for the weekend to escape the urban setting, stimulated by a bright, natural landscape and a vast range of leisure activities. Many of the people in impressionist paintings of the Paris suburbs are not locals. The railway and industry (which is notably absent in this painting) and which imposed on and “mutilated” the countryside mainly served tourists, not locals. Many locals' livelihoods were either threatened or destroyed by the railway, while upper-class Parisians nonchalantly engaged in leisure activities on the weekends and then left for the city. Unlike Sisley, who succeeded in displacing himself from Paris and convinced viewers of his place among local villagers, Monet has been criticized for being the “visitor who treated suburban villages like so many outdoor studies seldom penetrated by local life, except for its artifacts” (Herbert).
Further, this scene deliberately lacks any signs of industry. The water is beautifully rippling and the boats are small and simple. The people enjoy the purity of nature and the company of others. It is not natural to place bourgeois people with factory smokestacks or bridges as “there was clearly some discord in the landscape, something which prevented nature from being seen in the proper way…it had to do with the fact as large as bourgeois society itself; not just the signs of industry, but other bourgeois, too many of them, pretending not to be industrious” (Clark 154). Bourgeois could not be pictured alongside industry because many of them turned a blind eye to its laborers and to its encroachment on the countryside. Upper-class Parisians were not associated with the factory, they were associated with beautiful floating cafes and leisurely boating and so they were pictured as so. In comparing Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère and Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, we see two very different treatments and development of class in the suburbs, with one who can afford to avoid industry and the other who cannot.
It is important to note that these individuals pictured are likely “tourists” seeking the simple pleasures of a “riverside paradise,” offered only by the suburbs. These are probably Parisians visiting for the weekend to escape the urban setting, stimulated by a bright, natural landscape and a vast range of leisure activities. Many of the people in impressionist paintings of the Paris suburbs are not locals. The railway and industry (which is notably absent in this painting) and which imposed on and “mutilated” the countryside mainly served tourists, not locals. Many locals' livelihoods were either threatened or destroyed by the railway, while upper-class Parisians nonchalantly engaged in leisure activities on the weekends and then left for the city. Unlike Sisley, who succeeded in displacing himself from Paris and convinced viewers of his place among local villagers, Monet has been criticized for being the “visitor who treated suburban villages like so many outdoor studies seldom penetrated by local life, except for its artifacts” (Herbert).
Further, this scene deliberately lacks any signs of industry. The water is beautifully rippling and the boats are small and simple. The people enjoy the purity of nature and the company of others. It is not natural to place bourgeois people with factory smokestacks or bridges as “there was clearly some discord in the landscape, something which prevented nature from being seen in the proper way…it had to do with the fact as large as bourgeois society itself; not just the signs of industry, but other bourgeois, too many of them, pretending not to be industrious” (Clark 154). Bourgeois could not be pictured alongside industry because many of them turned a blind eye to its laborers and to its encroachment on the countryside. Upper-class Parisians were not associated with the factory, they were associated with beautiful floating cafes and leisurely boating and so they were pictured as so. In comparing Monet's Bathers at La Grenouillère and Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, we see two very different treatments and development of class in the suburbs, with one who can afford to avoid industry and the other who cannot.
Creator
Claude Monet
Source
Clark, TJ. "The Environs of Paris," The Painting of Modern Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 147-204.
Herbert, Robert L. Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Print.
Fallone, Emma. “Art as a Window Into the Past: Impressionist views of Haussman’s Paris.” The Yale Historical Review, 2015. https://historicalreview.yale.edu/sites/default/files/yhr_fall_2015_web.pdf
https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/impressionists-at-argenteuil.html
Herbert, Robert L. Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Print.
Fallone, Emma. “Art as a Window Into the Past: Impressionist views of Haussman’s Paris.” The Yale Historical Review, 2015. https://historicalreview.yale.edu/sites/default/files/yhr_fall_2015_web.pdf
https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/impressionists-at-argenteuil.html
Date
1869
Contributor
Sofia Petrulla
Relation
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère (1869)
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437135
Samu, Margaret. “Impressionism: Art and Modernity.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm (October 2004)
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437135
Samu, Margaret. “Impressionism: Art and Modernity.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm (October 2004)
Citation
Claude Monet, “La Grenouillère,” Cornell ARTH 3625/6625, accessed May 16, 2024, https://cornellcolab.net/pariscaptialofmodernity/items/show/5665.