there’s a painting in the national museum in stockholm that i return to every time. i’ve been visiting this painting for ten years. i see it more frequently than some friends or family. it speaks to me. it is a time portal to a time i’ll never see. a place i’ve never been. it’s called la grenouillère by renoir.
i remember the first time i saw it in the national museum in 2015. it was at the end of the hallway and i was immediately drawn to it. it was the first renoir that really caught my eye, but not the last.
coming back to it time after time, following it around stockholm as it moved from building to building as the new museum was being built, that’s just what i do. last year i got to visit it twice. see it in sunlight in two seasons. decipher brush strokes and move around, admiring it from different angles. watch others view it, maybe for the first time, maybe not. get joy from seeing them see it. there’s no rhyme or reason for this piece to draw me back. other paintings are more colorful, more meaningful, other pieces draw me in and make me imagine my dream life, but la la grenouillère gives me some grounding in stockholm. it’s always there, it’s always green, it’s a bridge between my dream stockholm life and my dream french life.
