A Rainy Day in Paris
With his popular painting, ‘The Umbrellas', Pierre-Auguste Renoir invites us to step into a moment suspended in time…
Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent five years between 1881 and 1886 on his painting, The Umbrellas, yet it seems to capture a moment suspended in time. Rain is starting to fall and the bustling pedestrians pause to put up their umbrellas. The people are so close the shapes of the open umbrellas are held at awkward angles above them. At the centre one woman is in the process of opening her umbrella, while in the left foreground is a grisette — a colloquialism of the times meaning a young woman working in the garment industry as a cutter, seamstress, or in this case, a milliner's assistant — one assumes she’s delivering a hat in the bandbox, though she is hatless, gloveless, and without an umbrella.
With one hand she raises her skirt clear of the dampening dirt, with the other she steadies the bandbox she carries over her arm. At this time, umbrellas were expensive items, and this clearly shows the class divide, although a gentleman at the far left seems about to offer her shelter under his umbrella. The grisette is looking directly at us. The little girl carrying a hoop and stick also gazes out at the viewer, acknowledging our presence and inviting us to step into the scene. At 1.8 metres high…
