Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Oarsmen at Chatou is a brightly colored scene of a woman and three men, one in a canoe, in the foreground of a setting half-rural and half-suburban.
Renoir’s style here – placing small dashes of different colors alongside each other – is reminiscent but stops short of pointillism and makes the entire picture radiate in a coloristic unity with a balance of cold and warm. This is particularly notable given that this picture was painted in 1879 at the peak of Impressionism, a decade before Pointillism began its rise in popularity.
Renoir painted a number of works in Chatou, a town North-West of Paris on the Seine including Luncheon of the Boating Party and Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Oarsmen at Chatou is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.