7.5 Monet and Renoir – comparative works

Monet painted at La Grenouillère alongside Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with the competition perhaps proving beneficial to both painters. You should be able to find other pictures painted by both artists during their time at the location. Thomson suggests that ‘Monet, as ever, was the more radical, while Renoir was more tentative’, and that Monet’s ‘trees are reduced to massed shapes’, while ‘Renoir’s brushwork is more delicate and fussy’ (Thomson p. 100), reminiscent of Watteau or Boucher in the eighteenth century.

Individual activity: technique and pictorial effects

Compare the two pictures by Monet and Renoir illustrated above (also in Thomson p. 101). What differences are there of technique and depictive process? What type of atmosphere are the artists attempting to create?

Write down your answers.

Additional Resources

• Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère at the National Gallery
• Renoir’s La Grenouillère (1869) at the Oskar Reinhart Collection
• Also in Thomson p. 101
• Renoir’s La Grenouillère (1869) Auguste Renoir at the Nationalmuseum Stockholm