Magnani-Rocca Foundation celebrates Impressionism by hosting Renoir's Promenade

For the 150th anniversary of the birth ofImpressionism, the Magnani-Rocca Foundation in Mamiano di Traversetolo (Parma) is hosting the 1870 work La Promenade by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (Limoges, 1841 - Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919) from September 1 to December 15, 2024, from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for a first time in Italy. Renoir’s Promenade is considered one of the highest achievements of the artist’s production and is exhibited at the Villa dei Capolavori along with works by Monet, the Cézanne and the two Renoirs in the permanent collection, thus representing the most important nucleus of French painting from the Impressionist period visible in Italy.

The painting depicts a scene of daily life whose characters are well recognizable socially. The canotier presents himself as a bourgeois while his companion as one of the famous grisettes, the typical Parisian girls of the bohemian culture, interested in handsome young men for their charm and not for their economic and social position. Most likely the young woman is Lise Tréhot who was Renoir’s favorite model and companion during the 1860s and appears in many of his works from that period. Stylistically, La Promenade is an homage to earlier artists whom Renoir greatly admired such as Watteau and Fragonard. Unlike the images of seduction created by his predecessors, however, Renoir’s is an image captured with spontaneity.

Renoir had spent the previous summer painting outdoors with Monet, who encouraged him to move toward a lighter, brighter palette. The light filtering through the foliage would become a hallmark of Renoir’s best Impressionist works of the 1870s and 1880s. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Renoir inaugurated a new artistic phase, marked by a more pronounced departure from the naturalistic rendering of subjects, evident in the use of color ranges and the dissolution of contour lines, which merged into color harmonies and luministic vibrations. It is possible to find the change in the paintings selected by Luigi Magnani, part of the art collections of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation. The works compared with La Promenade thus present an opportunity to observe Renoir’s stylistic evolution.

Practical information

Hours: Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. | Saturdays, Sundays and holidays continuous 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, September 1, Saturday, 7 and Sunday, September 8 hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Full admission: € 15

Reduced admission: € 5

Magnani-Rocca Foundation celebrates Impressionism by hosting Renoir's Promenade

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.