Renoir was twenty-nine when he painted La Promenade and a member ofa close-knit group o f young avant-garde artists soon to be fractured by France's declaration o f war on Germany. Having spent the previous summer painting out-of-doors alongside Monet in La Grenouillere, Renoir displays in La Promenade a shift toward the high- keyed palette characteristic of the recently forged Impressionist style. In this landmark of early Impressionism, Renoir no longer conceives o f nature as a backdrop, but rather, by working almost certainly en plein air and by using spontaneous brushwork and all-over dappled light, he fully integrates the figures into their verdant setting.

Themes of dalliance and leisure run throughout Renoir's oeuvre. In contrast with Monet's views of domesticity amid flowering gardens, nature for Renoir is seen both as a setting for seduction and as a metaphor for sensual pleasure. The trysting couple in the Getty canvas is at once completely modern—evocative of the new Parisian middle class, flocking on the weekends to the parks and suburbs—as well as representative of a more long-standing art-historical motif, traceable to the amorous couples of Watteau's fetes galantes, where enticement into secluded glades is one of the stages of seduction.

With his characteristic feathery brushwork, Renoir conveys in La Promenade the dappled effect of sunlight filtered through foliage that would become the hallmark of many of his greatest works of the 1870s and 1880s. Deeper in the woods and partially engulfed in shadow, the male figure appears somewhat rustic in comparison to his elegant companion, who turns back to gently pull her diaphanous white gown free of the underbrush. She has been variously identified as Rapha, the mistress of Renoir's friend Edmond Maitre, and as Lise Trehot, Renoir's own mistress. The latter possibility would suggest the shadowy figure who draws the woman forward is the artist himself, his pictorial role intended as analogous perhaps to that of the painter, drawing the viewer into the illusionistic space of the canvas. Renoir returns to this composition in 1883 for a drawing published in the magazine La Vie Moderne (December 29) in which the relative positions of the man and woman are reversed, both spatially and
in terms of initiative.

Signature(s): Lower left (with date): "A. Renoir. 70." 

Object Number: 89.PA.41 

Provenance:

- 1898 Gustave Goupy(Paris, France) [sold, "G.G." sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 30, 1898, lot 33, to Durand-Ruel.] Source: GRI annotated copy of sale catalogue, Hotel Drouot, March 30, 1898, p. 23, lot 33.

1898 - 1908 Galerie Durand-Ruel (Paris)(New York, New York; Paris, France) sold to Galerie Paul Cassirer, September 11, 1908.

1908 Galerie Paul Cassirer(Berlin, Germany; London, England)

1908 - 1927 Bernhard Köhler1849 - 1927 (Berlin, Germany) probably by inheritance to his son, Bernhard Köhler, the Younger, 1927.

1927 - at least 1930 Probably  Bernhard Köhler, the Younger1882 - 1964 by 1933 - still in 1942 Paul Rosenberg & Co.(London, England; New York, New York; Paris, France)

by 1956 - 1958 Nate B. Spingold1886 - 1958 (New York, New York; Palm Beach, Florida) and  Frances Spingold(New York, New York; Palm Beach, Florida) upon his death, by inheritance to his wife, Frances Spingold, 1958.

1958 - 1976 Frances Spingold(New York, New York; Palm Beach, Florida) [sold, Spingold sale, Sotheby's, London, November 29, 1976, lot 22, to Seito.]

1976 - Seito(Tokyo, Japan)

by 1978 - 1989 British Rail Pension Trustee Company, Ltd.(London, England) [sold, British Rail Pension Fund sale, Sotheby's, London, April 4, 1989, lot 6, to the J. Paul Getty Museum.]