La Promenade
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1870
The emotional connection I have with this painting in particular is cause for it to me one of my favorite paintings. I first saw this painting at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles back when I was in high school. I was on a “design field trip” with my ROP Graphics class and we were at the Getty for a back scene tour of the design and communications department. Before the tour we had some time to tour a few collections and I went to the Impressionist collections which is where I saw this painting. This painting has a special significance to me because the painting brought out my emotional feelings at that time in my life.
A day or so before I saw the painting, my boyfriend at the time had talked to me about our relationship and how we would be going to college soon and how we should start thinking about splitting up and moving on. Since that conversation I had these weird feelings because deep inside I didn’t want to think about going to college and the idea of breaking up was making me very uncomfortable. I was enjoying my life the way it was because it had taken me a while to finally have what I wanted, a boyfriend that I really liked and an awesome senior year.
When I saw the painting, the emotional feelings I had, the fear of my boyfriend breaking up with me came out. The way the woman is looking away as the gentleman is trying to lead her forward reminded me of myself and how I couldn’t bare to look at the future, I didn’t want to look forward or go because I was content where I was. The gentleman leads her with care and passion, to me representing a romantic connection between them and the woman really wants to go with the gentleman because she wants to be with him, but she is unsure of where the gentleman is leading her.
