John House examines the many facets of the work and what it reveals about Renoir as a man and artist. He asks, "What did it mean to paint a picture like La Promenade in France in 1870, in the final months of Napoleon III's Second Empire?" The reader is invited to look at the canvas - and Impressionism - as a rejection of the idealist world of academic art and as a challenge to contemporary social norms.
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