The French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) began his career as a porcelain painter, but he went on to become a major innovator in art and influenced 20th-century artists like Pablo Picasso.
Early in his career, Renoir began copying paintings at the Louvre museum in Paris. He soon met up with a group of artists that included Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. Together, they began to rebel against the rigid rules set by the French Academy, whose members decided which artworks would be shown in its prestigious Salon exhibitions. The Academy selected large paintings painted in a realistic style, and rejected those that did not conform to these ideals.
Renoir and other rebellious artists began to take their easels outdoors, where they experimented with using quick brushstrokes of bright color to capture the effects of sunlight across buildings, grass, trees, and rippling water. Instead of the grandiose historical scenes favored by the French Academy, these artists painted scenes of everyday life: dancing at outdoor cafés, boating parties on sun-drenched rivers, leisurely picnics on the grass. In 1874, these rebels began mounting their own exhibitions. Art critics were outraged. One even called the new group of artists a bunch of “lunatics.” Today, however, they are known—and revered—as the Impressionists.
Dance at Bougival re-creates a scene from an outdoor café in a Paris suburb. Renoir uses small, repeated brushstrokes of vivid color to convey a sense of joy. The focal point of the composition is the young woman’s face, framed by her bright-red bonnet. Her light dress stands out against the man’s dark-blue suit and the hazy figures in the background. The repetition of brushstrokes creates texture and a sense of the dancers’ whirling movements. Renoir avoids the use of hard edges or heavy lines— everything in the composition has a soft, sometimes blurry quality.
Renoir specialized in images of beautiful young women. In Dance at Bougival, the female dancer seems especially young and perhaps a bit innocent, in her delicate, pale-pink dress. Her dance partner seems captivated by her, but she turns away from his intense gaze.