Bathers at La Grenouillère

In talking to my wife yesterday I realised I have an identification with some art galleries and museums. They are ones I have visited more than once and when I think of them I see a corridor here or a room there. I have become integrated in them.

It’s a nice feeling and it’s thanks to Tamara because I don’t think I would have visited so many galleries and museums nor so often otherwise.

And I need exposure to art.

Now we live in London I can just ‘pop down’ to the National Gallery.

And the subject for today is Claude Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère, which he painted in 1869.

Monet and Renoir spent that summer painting together at La Grenouillère (The Frog Pond) on the Seine. It is. or was, a resort with a floating restaurant, a dance hall and riverside tables.

I took this photo of the painting.

What I see is that the woman on the right, facing us, has a face fixed a million miles away. Or is she looking at something in the distance? Or is she recalling a memory? Is it a good memory, a bad memory?

She doesn’t seem to have any relationship with the other woman, nor with anyone at all. She could be catatonic for all we can see. From her passive body language she doesn’t seem to be interested in the scene around her, unlike the other woman. Perhaps she is hyper-aware and drinking in the sights and sounds as in a dream. Perhaps she is listening to the sounds that carry over the water.

Perhaps it is her first visit out into the world since some terrible tragedy, and she cannot bear to take off her lace gloves for fear of being to exposed to the world.

Perhaps the woman on the left is calming her, having taken on the task of accompanying her friend on her first foray out of the house.

Are the two women of the same social status? Is the woman on the left in the employ of the other woman?

And the title ‘Bathers at La Grenouillère’ – what bathers, where are they? Do these women fit the description of bathers?

I read that Monet deliberately downplayed emotions because he wanted the women to function as elements in a composition about light and reflection, not as characters in a narrative.

I can’t trace whether he said that or others said that is what he wanted.

Strange.

But do I like it? Yes, it is satisfying – all the colours and the arrangement – satisfying except for the woman. For me the whole painting pivots around her face and her expression. That is why I like it more than if it were just a scene of light and reflection.