Garçons Nus Dans Les Rochers À Guernsey 1883

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted ‘Garçons Nus Dans Les Rochers À Guernsey’ with oil on canvas. The location of Guernsey in the painting's title is a reference to the island where Renoir spent a little over a month in late summer 1883. By the 1880s, many artists had moved to Guernsey, creating an artist colony. The island was an attractive place to work, offering varied coastal scenery and a slower pace of life. Renoir painted fifteen or so canvases on the island. Paintings of nude male figures were, at this time, an exercise that demonstrated the artist's knowledge of classical forms and mastery of the human figure. The art institutions of Renoir's time, such as the French *Académie des Beaux-Arts*, regarded paintings of nude men as the pinnacle of an artist's skill. Art historians often consult artists’ letters, exhibition reviews and other documents to shed light on the social meaning of paintings such as this.