Returning from Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester, this painting places us in a busy Parisian street close to six principal figures who fill the foreground.

Learn more about the milling crowd that almost completely blocks out the boulevard beyond and the canopy of umbrellas that nearly fills the top quarter of the picture. Find out how the work, painted in two stages, with a gap of around four years between each stage, reflects the change in Renoir’s art during the 1880s. We see him beginning to move away from Impressionism and looking instead to classical art.

Jennifer Hirschl grew up in New York, where art was a constant. Her grandparents were both art dealers in the city, and enthusiastic collectors of art. They regularly attended exhibitions at galleries and museums such as The Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, MoMA and the Frick Collection. After studying art history at college in the US and then in London, gaining a diploma in Modern Art Studies from Christie’s Education, Jennifer had her own gallery for 10 years representing young painters and photographers. After which, Jennifer made the decision to embark on a second career as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide in 2021. 

The National Gallery is one of many places that Jennifer loves to guide, not only because of its rich collection of masterpieces throughout history, but also of the stories that you can weave through the artists and their subjects - the possibilities are endless.