Pierre-Auguste Renoir: On the Grass (Jeunes femmes assises dans l'herbe); Pierre-Auguste Renoir; c. 1873; Oil in canvas; Two women wearing fashionable dresses relax in the grass; one; it seems; has just picked a bunch of flowers. It is difficult to tell whether the scene takes place in a Parisian garden鈥攑erhaps a private; overgrown one鈥攐r whether the women are in the countryside somewhere outside the city. What is clear is that Renoir here was painting en plein aire; bringing his canvas outdoors to work directly before his subject. Note how attentive he is to the shifting conditions of the natural world: the dress of the foreground figure is a swirl of colors; with strokes of lavender; blue; and grey indicating shadows from perhaps a tree or a cloud passing overhead. The radical handling of paint鈥攖he loose strokes moving in different directions; the jabs of color at upper left鈥攚ere shocking to critics in the mid-1870s.; Overall: 23 1/2 x 28 15/16 in. (59.7 x 73.5 cm)