The Swing (Renoir)

The Swing (French: La balançoire) is an 1876 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir who was a leading exponent of the Impressionist style. The painting measures 92 x 73 centimetres and is in the Musée d’Orsay. Renoir executed the painting in what are now the Musée de Montmartre gardens. He had rented a cottage in the gardens so that he could be closer to the Moulin de la Galette where he was engaged in painting his 1896 Bal du moulin de la Galette.

Description
The girl holding the swing could be aged about fifteen, and wears a pale dress with blue bows and a hat, which adds to the charm of the painting. There is a small group of people, in the middle distance, behind the girl to the right, and a young girl in a straw hat looks on from the left. The people seem to stand on a forest floor of blossoms. The quivering light is rendered by the patches of pale colour, particularly on the clothing and the ground. This technique particularly annoyed the critics when the painting was shown at the Salon of 1877.

The model was Jeanne Samary, a favourite of Renoir's, who appears in many of his paintings. The two men are Renoir's brother Edmond and a painter friend, Norbert Goeneutte (also appearing in Bal).