Monet Painting in His Garden by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Date: 1873
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions : Height: 46 cm (18.1 in); Width: 60 cm (23.6 in)
Collection: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
What I love about this painting:
Renoir shows us that Claude Monet’s garden is lush and a little wild, like the man who owns it. Yet, although he is the subject of this painting, Monet is completely focused on his work. The colors are vivid, which inspires me since my own garden is only now shaking off the depredations of winter. I would love to spend time in this riotous garden.
Renoir visited his good friend many times during the years Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on the right bank of the Seine river near Paris. In 1873, Monet purchased a small boat equipped to be used as a floating studio, which must have been a draw for Renoir and his friends.
About the artist (via Wikipedia):
In 1862, Auguste Renoir began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. At times, during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Renoir had his first success at the Salon of 1868 with his painting Lise with a Parasol (1867), which depicted Lise Tréhot, his lover at the time. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, recognition was slow in coming, partly as a result of the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War.
Renoir was inspired by the style and subject matter of previous modern painters Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet. After a series of rejections by the Salon juries, he joined forces with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and several other artists to mount the first Impressionist exhibition in April 1874, in which Renoir displayed six paintings. Although the critical response to the exhibition was largely unfavorable, Renoir’s work was comparatively well received. That same year, two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
Credits and Attributions:
Monet Painting in His Garden by Pierre-Auguste Renoir / Public domain
Wikipedia contributors, “Pierre-Auguste Renoir,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-Auguste_Renoir&oldid=949963500 (accessed April 17, 2020).
Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Renoir-Monet painting.png,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Renoir-Monet_painting.png&oldid=338421916 (accessed April 17, 2020).
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 
