This picture depicts a small restaurant called La Grenouillére. which was a meeting place frequented by the Impressionists on the Seine between Chatou and Bougival. Renoir often represented this picturesque locale, painting it from various angles. Vollard quotes Renoir as saying that in 1868 he painted many different views of La Grenouillére. On the basis of this evidence, Meier Graefe dated the Pushkin Museum painting 1868. Venturi, Rouart and Rewald thought that the picture was painted in September 1869, about the time of a similar landscape by Claude Monet. The landscapes of both men belong to Impressionism? earliest phase.

La Grenouillére is described by Guy de Maupassant in his story Ivette. In 1869, Monet wrote to Bazille, "... I am dreaming of a picture, the swimming area of La Grenouillére, for which I have some bad sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who is spending two months with me. also wants to do this picture” (G. Poulain, Bazille et ses amis, Paris, 1932. p. 161). His project was fulfilled in his painting Argenteuil: River and Trees (private collection, USA) and by Renoir in a painting in the Pushkin collection, La Grenouillére. According to K.3. Champa, the Moscow painting is the first result of Renoir and Monet working together on the same subject. Renoir made another version of La Grenouillére together with Monet (collection of O. Reinhart am Rémerholz, Winterthur) and yet another version (National Museum, Stockholm). Renoir returned to this scene again in 1879 (A la Grenouillére. Paris. Louvre).

1869