Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Skiff (La Yole)

1875

Paintings sorted by Historical period | Painter | Subject matter | Pigments used

Overview

Medium: Oil
Support: Canvas
Size: 71 cm x 92 cm

Art period: Impressionism
National Gallery London
NG 6478

The description of this painting by Tricia Cussack in her essay on bourgeois leisure on the Seine skilfully expresses the atmosphere of the scene (1).

Renoir’s The Skiff (c.1879) depicts a woman rowing with a female companion, but the figures are un-individualised and the rower, dressed fashionably in a tilted hat, is not strenuously engaged with the task of rowing. The skiff floats on a glittering pool shared only with a few other leisure craft. A large detached villa stands on the bank, a white wall and gate leading to the riverbank as if this section of the river and surrounding vegetation formed part of its parkland estate. All this emphasises the character of the Seine as an unthreatening site of domesticated middle-class leisure, and women’s place as amateur boaters, their impracticable dress in Veblen’s terms demonstrating their detachment from useful activity. The scene conveys a sense of security and tranquillity, while the link with Paris is recalled by the unobtrusive trains passing in the background.

(1) Tricia Cusack, Bourgeois Leisure on the Seine: Impressionism, Forgetting
and National Identity in the French Third Republic, National Identities, 9:2, 2007, 163-182, DOI: 10.1080/14608940701333837

Pigments

Pigment Analysis

Renoir used a restricted palette for this painting merely consisting of seven pigments; not counting lead white. He applied the paints mostly unmixed and directly from the tube, which explains the intensity and brilliance of the colours (1).

The river is painted in pure cobalt blue mixed with lead white in the highlights.