Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Country Dance Socks

Dance in the Country (Danse à la campagne), 1883 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, oil on canvas. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Limoges, 1841 - Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919) was a French Impressionist painter. Renoir created it as the companion to Dance in the City and showed the pair in March 1883. Aline Charigot, who later became his wife, posed with his friend Paul Lhote. The relaxed outdoor dance, set on the terrace of a country inn in an unidentified Paris suburb, deliberately contrasts with the more formal city scene. Renoir had recently returned from Italy, where Renaissance painting renewed his interest in drawing and solid figure construction. The pair of paintings makes his stylistic change of the early 1880s especially clear.