Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne (Patineurs au Bois de Boulogne), 1868 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne (Patineurs au Bois de Boulogne), painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1868, depicts a crowded Parisian pleasure: dozens of elegantly dressed skaters and strollers cross the frozen Lac Inférieur in the Bois de Boulogne beneath a pale winter sky, dark silhouetted figures and a lone red hood animating the wide expanse of ice and snow. Painted en plein air during the bitterly cold January of 1868, when Renoir was just twenty-six, this early genre scene shows him working in a bolder, more realist idiom than his later Impressionist work, using an elevated vantage point to capture the sociable bustle of the recently opened park. It remains one of the very few winter landscapes Renoir produced in his long career.

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919). Date: 1868.

Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne (Patineurs au Bois de Boulogne), 1868 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Impressionist Winter Canvas Print.