La Grenouillere

A popular bathing place on the Seine

La Grenouillère was a riverside resort on the Seine near Bougival, west of Paris, with a floating café, boats for hire and a place to swim. Parisians came by train on summer weekends.

In the summer of 1869, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir set up their easels there side by side. Their paintings of the spot are often seen as the moment Impressionism found its method. This canvas belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The little island called the Camembert

At the centre, a small round island with a single tree is crowded with visitors in hats and dresses. Regulars nicknamed it the Camembert, after the round cheese. Monet painted the figures with quick dabs, only suggesting them.

At the left, bathers stand in the water near a wooden walkway. Their heads and shoulders are a few touches of colour.

Water made of broken strokes

The real subject is the water. Monet painted it in thick horizontal strokes of blue, black, white and yellow, side by side, without blending. From a distance they become ripples and reflections of light.

This broken handling of water and light became one of the basic techniques of Impressionism.

Rowing boats and the floating café

In the foreground, empty rowing boats lie in the water, painted with long, simple strokes.

At the right is the floating café, with its striped roof and the words for boat hire painted on its side. People lean on the railing, watching the scene.

He called them bad sketches

Monet wrote to his friend Frédéric Bazille that he dreamed of a painting of the bathing place, but had only made some bad sketches. The large final picture he planned is lost. The smaller canvases, including this one, are now considered among his most important early works.

Two friends, two views

In 1869 Monet and Renoir were young, poor and close friends. Renoir often brought bread to the Monet household when money ran out. That summer they worked side by side at La Grenouillère, sometimes setting up their easels only a few steps apart.

Their paintings of the spot are fascinating to compare. Renoir’s version, now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, focuses more on the people, the dresses and the social life of the place. Monet’s concentrates on the water, the light and the structure of the scene. The same view produced two different temperaments.

Sketch or finished picture?

Monet wrote to Bazille that he had a dream of a large painting of the bathing place and that he had made some bad sketches for it. Many historians think the Met canvas is one of those sketches, made quickly outdoors in preparation for a bigger work for the Salon.

The larger painting, if it was completed, has been lost. What remains is the sketch, and it has become far more famous than any finished Salon picture could have been. Its quick, broken strokes look fresh and modern because they were never polished.

A key moment for Impressionism

The name Impressionism did not exist yet in 1869; it came only in 1874, after a critic mocked Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. But the technique was already here: broken strokes of unmixed colour, painted outdoors, to capture the effect of light on water.

That is why La Grenouillère is so important. It shows Monet and Renoir finding, side by side, a new way of painting the modern world: leisure, trains, cafés and summer crowds, captured in a single glance.

Where to see it

Monet’s La Grenouillère is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Our hand-painted oil reproduction follows this composition. For more paintings of water and boats, explore our collection of paintings of the sea, or read about Renoir’s version of La Grenouillère.

Questions about La Grenouillère

What was La Grenouillère?

A bathing place and floating café on the Seine near Bougival, popular with Parisians.

Where is the original?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Did Renoir paint it too?

Yes. Monet and Renoir painted the spot side by side in 1869.

How large is it?

74.6 × 99.7 centimetres, oil on canvas.

Did Renoir paint the same place?

Yes. Renoir painted beside Monet in 1869; one of his versions is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

Is it a sketch?

Many historians think so. Monet described making sketches for a larger painting that is now lost.

Sources and image credit

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: La Grenouillère
• Wikimedia Commons: La Grenouillère

Public-domain reproduction of La Grenouillère (1869), via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.