Springtime in Essoyes

Renoir spent time in Essoyes, the village in Burgundy that was his wife Aline's birthplace, from the late 1880s onward and eventually built a studio there. His Essoyes paintings — of which this is one — focus on the Burgundian countryside: open meadows, flowering orchards, rural figures. By the 1890s, when this was likely painted, Renoir had largely resolved his stylistic uncertainties of the early '80s and was working in the warm, feathery mode of his late Impressionism. Essoyes provided a different visual register from the Mediterranean luminosity of his Cagnes paintings, its greener, cooler countryside demanding a lighter, more muted palette.

The scene is bathed in soft diffused light without strong shadows, Renoir maintaining his preference for even illumination over dramatic contrasts. Spring greens and whites are built up in short, curving strokes that give the meadow a breathing, textile quality. Figures — probably local women — are loosely sketched, their forms less resolved than the surrounding landscape.