Grand Canal, Venice
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French, 1841–1919
Oil on canvas, 1881
Size: 54 x 65.1 cm (21 1/4 x 25 5/8 in.)
Bequest of Alexander Cochrane 1919, MFA #19.173
"When Renoir's Venetian pictures were first exhibited, one critic called them, 'the most outrageous series of ferocious daubs that any slanderer of Venice could possibly imagine.' They constituted a radical departure from traditional Venetian vedute- sober view paintings emphasizing the city's famous monuments. Barely recognizable as the stretch of canal between the Ca' Foscari palace and the Rialto Bridge, Renoir's picture dissolves stone façades into a lacy pattern of color no more material than water or clouds." (From info card)
