Picking Flowers

Renoir painted this open-air figure in 1875 during summer excursions to the outskirts of Paris where he and Monet frequently worked side by side in the Seine valley. The subject — a woman gathering wildflowers in an open field — belongs to a category of outdoor genre paintings he was producing in significant numbers at this time. These works evoke leisured summer afternoons, connecting to the bourgeois relaxation culture that shaped much Impressionist subject matter. The National Gallery of Art in Washington holds several Renoir canvases from the 1870s that document this outdoor figure period at its most characteristic.

Renoir applies paint in loose, varied strokes that unify figure and landscape through a shared flickering quality of light. Flowers are dabs of bright colour against a cooler green field, while the woman's dress is built with broader sweeping strokes.