The Grands Boulevards

Paris comes alive in this cheerful 1875 painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Along one of the city's wide, tree-lined avenues, people wander the pavement, a horse-drawn carriage clatters past, and the air seems to hum with the pace of a growing city. Renoir was a central name in the Impressionist movement, and his approach shows it clearly. Instead of sharp lines and careful detail, he built the scene from loose strokes and little touches of color, catching the shimmer of light and the sense of a day slipping by.

These grand boulevards carried real meaning for Parisians. Not long before Renoir set up his easel, Baron Haussmann had cut through the crowded old city to lay down these sweeping new streets, and painters were drawn to the stylish crowds who came to stroll and be admired. The figures grow softer and vaguer as they recede into the distance, blurring into a mass of shapes much like a crowd caught out of the corner of your eye. This is no dramatic masterpiece, and it was never meant to be. Renoir simply found something worth painting in ordinary city life, in the plain joy of a sunny afternoon in the middle of the crowd.