Painted towards the end of the 1870s, Place de la trinité represents the height of Renoir’s engagement with Impressionism and emphasises the importance of his unique approach to capturing modern life. It belongs to a small group of oils (including figs. 1 & 2) in which Renoir focused on scenes from the busy streets of the French capital and in which he combines fluid brushstrokes with a remarkably fresh execution to conjure the energy and optimism of contemporary Paris.

The pioneering approach of the Impressionists in breaking away from the Salon for their independent exhibition of 1874 is one of the defining moments of art history. The opportunity to view the work of these artists together for the first time clarified their achievements as painters en plein air and their revolutionary approach to the use of light and colour. In his landmark 1876 essay ‘The Impressionists and Edouard Manet’ Stéphane Mallarmé described the achievements of the Impressionists, ‘[they] use simple colour, fresh, or lightly laid on, and their results appear to have been attained at the first stroke, that the ever-present light blends with and vivifies all things. As to the details of the picture, nothing should be absolutely fixed in order that we may feel the bright gleam which lights the picture, or the diaphanous shadow which veils it, are only seen in passing, and just when the spectator beholds the represented subject, which being composed of a harmony of reflected and ever-changing lights, cannot be supposed always to look the same, but palpitates with movement, light, and life’ (quoted in The New Painting: Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 31).

This is certainly true of the present work, where Renoir makes clever use of diagonals of light and shadow and quickly applied daubs of paint to achieve a real sense of immediacy. He is not interested in the architecture of Haussmann’s new Paris as Christopher Riopelle notes: ‘Renoir tended to mask the regimented severity of the long rows of new buildings, softening their harsh outlines by focusing instead on the trees and flowers that filled the squares and lined the boulevards. Nature gave him the motifs with which to “cover over the stark regularity of Haussmann’s conception. They help expiate the crime of monotony with the aid of the picturesque”’ (quoted in Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883 (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 160). In Place de la trinité the upper half of the composition is dominated by the lush foliage of a line of trees and it is true that their colourful blossoms and loosely sketched leaves have an important and uplifting effect on the overall atmosphere.

They also direct our attention to the real action of the painting. The subject of the city – with its shifting crowds and vibrant streets – had obvious appeal for Renoir and his contemporaries. Monet painted a number of city scenes in these early years (fig. 4), but where his focus is a broad panorama, Renoir’s interest lies in the anecdotal and intimate. So in Place de la trinité we see the nurse pushing a perambulator, the couples embracing by the palisade and the little dog crossing the street. This interest – this humanity – is central to much of Renoir’s best work in this period, epitomised in monumental canvases such as his Bal du moulin de la Galette (fig. 5).

All these figures are caught in the moment of their momentary action; Renoir achieves the rare feat of communicating the concrete reality of standing in that spot on the Place de la Trinité on that particular day and at the same time, underlining the transience of the scene he places before our eyes. His early views of the city would have an important impact for an artist like Pissarro (fig. 6) who would turn again to the city at the end of the century as the rise of photography began to change how artists thought about and composed their works (fig. 7). They would also help to consolidate Renoir’s legacy as one of the most important figures of Impressionism. As art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary wrote after the Salon of 1879, ‘M. Renoir is assuredly to be placed at the forefront of those who are driven by the new spirit, and who seek the material for an original art in the life that surrounds them’ (quoted in Nicholas Wadley (ed.), Renoir. A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 119).