By the Seashore

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By the Seashore is a painting of Pierre-Auguste Renoir executed in 1883 and now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Late in the summer of 1883, Renoir spent about a month in St. Peter Port, the capital of Guernsey, and admired the rocks, cliffs and stunning view of Moulin Huet Bay in St. Martin. He painted the starts of fifteen pictures during his stay, most of which were finished later in his Paris studio. Guernsey lies 48km off the coast of mainland Normandy. Both share the same geology and Guernsey fulfills the "by the sea" criterion in the exhibition title.

The arc of the sitter's dark eyebrows and saucily tilted nose in that pleasant, rosy-cheeked face are common to works by Renoir. The woman in By the Seashore is almost certainly Aline Victorine Charigot (1859-1915), his frequent model, then-girlfriend and the future Madame Renoir. She had accompanied him on this particular trip, one of many that Renoir undertook at this time in his life. He was undergoing an artistic crisis, trying to reconcile the desirable elements of light and color he had gained from Impressionism with what he perceived as its undisciplined execution. This aesthetic battle being fought in Renoir's Guernsey scenes from 1883 is evident. His human figures in this series are either (1) carefully, almost classically rendered or (2) loose to the point of abstraction. Aline here looks as realistically fetching as any young woman could through the eyes of her artist lover, and much of the rattan wrapping on her chair is equally visible. Yet the background scenery is highly Impressionistic.