Monet and Renoir at La Grenouillère (1869): Two Painters, One River Bathing Spot
La Grenouillère was a floating restaurant and boat-hire place on the Seine at Croissy-sur-Seine, near Bougival, where Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted side by side in the summer of 1869. Their canvases show the same bathers, the same gangplank and the same small round islet, yet they differ in colour, touch and mood. Together they are often treated as the moment Impressionism took shape.
What was La Grenouillère?
The name means "the frog pond." It was a bathing and boating spot a short train ride from Paris, with a floating café, rental boats and a tiny round islet of trees that Parisians nicknamed the "Flowerpot" or the "Camembert." A wooden gangplank joined the islet to the floating restaurant. On a summer Sunday it was crowded and noisy, the opposite of the formal subjects of the official Salon.
Monet at La Grenouillère
In Monet's canvas the water fills most of the picture. He used short, broken strokes for the ripples and reflections, with the sunlight breaking into flecks of white and blue, and he reduced the people to dark touches of the brush. On 25 September 1869 he wrote to his friend Frédéric Bazille that he had a dream of a painting of "the baths of La Grenouillère," for which he had made some bad sketches (pochades). He added that Renoir, who had just spent two months there, also wanted to paint it.
Monet also painted Bathers at La Grenouillère (73 × 92 cm). A larger version once held in a Berlin collection is lost.
Renoir at La Grenouillère
Renoir's view is closer and his figures are easier to read: men in straw hats and women in summer dresses stand on the floating deck, and the painting is more interested in how people look together than in how light looks on water. His strokes on the water are close to Monet's, which is why the two paintings are discussed as a pair, but his colour is warmer and the figures are more clearly drawn.
How do the two paintings compare?
Subject: both show the floating restaurant, the gangplank and the islet at Croissy.
Size: Monet's is 74.6 × 99.7 cm and Renoir's is 66 × 81 cm, both modest canvases.
Water: Monet puts the water first and lets reflections dissolve into strokes. Renoir keeps the water as a backdrop for people.
Figures: Monet's people are marks of dark paint. Renoir's people have faces, hats and clothes.
Mood: Monet's picture is about light. Renoir's is about leisure.
Today: Monet's is in New York and Renoir's in Stockholm.
Why does La Grenouillère matter?
Both men were poor in 1869, and they worked side by side from necessity as much as friendship. Painting outdoors, quickly, in broken colour, was a method that suited that summer. Five years later, in 1874, the group exhibited together in Paris and critics gave them the name "Impressionists." For the larger story, read our guide to what Impressionism is. Monet's earlier friendship with another painter is told in Manet and Monet: the friendship behind the name everyone confuses, and Renoir's later style is in Renoir's Two Sisters on the Terrace.
Frequently asked questions
Did Monet and Renoir paint La Grenouillère together?
Yes. Both worked at the site in the summer of 1869 and painted the same scene, and Monet's letter to Bazille of 25 September 1869 mentions Renoir's stay there.
Why is La Grenouillère important for Impressionism?
The two paintings are an early example of the quick, outdoor, broken-colour method that became Impressionism, painted five years before the movement's first group show in 1874.
Zocine Art Design is an independent studio that prints classic paintings as wall art.
Browse Monet, Renoir and other classic art prints in the archive at Zocine.
New in the Journal: What Is Impressionism? A Reader's Guide
New in the Journal: Manet and Monet: The Friendship Behind the Name Everyone Confuses
New in the Journal: Renoir's Two Sisters on the Terrace, 1881
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