Regatta at Argenteuil

A summer afternoon on the Seine at Argenteuil, with sailboats crowding the water and a line of spectators strung along the grassy bank. Renoir painted this around 1874, the same year he and his friends staged the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris and got themselves mocked for it. The technique on display here is exactly what irritated the critics: the figures on the shore are little more than dabs of black and white, the flag at left is a few flicks of red and blue, and the whole sky has been scrubbed over with creamy strokes that never settle into clouds. Stand back and it all reads perfectly as a breezy, crowded day by the river.

Argenteuil was a short train ride from Paris and had become the weekend playground for city people who wanted boats, water and fresh air. Claude Monet lived there at the time, and Renoir came out to paint beside him, the two of them often setting up before the same view. The tall white sails dominating the center were built for racing, and the small dark shapes low in the water near them are rowers and swimmers. Renoir seems less interested in who won than in the way sunlight bounces off canvas sails and breaks up across the surface of the river in short blue and white strokes.