Landscape between Storms

Auguste Renoir

National Gallery of Art

This horizontal landscape is painted with broad, visible strokes in shades of laurel, fern, and pine green, dark yellow, and ash brown. A winding dirt path leads from the bottom center of the composition toward the horizon, which comes just over halfway up this painting. Thick, loosely painted green foliage dominates the left half of the painting, and a tall, slender tree trunk is near the right edge, partially cut off by the frame. At the center, farther down the path, a small person is painted with a few swipes of coffee brown. Patches of lighter green and yellow suggest sun filtering through the trees. The sky above is filled with swirling white and pale blue clouds, applied with loose brushstrokes that echo the motion of the vegetation below. The artist signed the lower left corner, “renoir.”