“A painter can’t be great if he doesn’t understand landscape. At one point the term ‘landscapist’ was one of scorn, especially in the eighteenth century. And yet, that century which I adore produced great landscape artists. I am of the eighteenth century.”
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Influenced by his friend Paul Cézanne, Renoir began to experiment more with watercolour. The swiftness of the medium allowed Renoir a different artistic freedom in capturing nature’s fleeting moments. In Le Chemin Renoir contrasts washes of tone with delicate small strokes, to beautifully capture the movement of the trees. The drawing has a loose, spontaneous quality which captures the essence of the landscape.

Renoir created a number of landscapes in the style of Le Chemin between 1885 and 1900, depicting scenes of the French countryside, fields, rivers and, as in the present work, forests. Renoir’s watercolours can now be found in many museum collections such as Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The National Gallery, London.