Bouquet of Flowers 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this canvas, "Bouquet of Flowers" with oil paint, sometime during his career in France. His style is a clear product of his time, which saw the rise of Impressionism. The Impressionists were, in part, reacting against the rigidity of the French art academy. As a young man, Renoir was frustrated by the strictures of academic painting, and his mature style, with its emphasis on capturing the fleeting effects of light and color, represents a rejection of those earlier constraints. Flowers, in their organic beauty, provided a perfect subject for exploring these ideas. To really understand Renoir, you might want to delve into the history of the Parisian art world, where the Salon system was giving way to independent galleries, or study the political and social history of late 19th-century France to understand what motivated Renoir's break from the established order.