active engagement with the same set of issues that faced artists with different values and affiliations. In the open forum of the Parisian art world of the i86os, the paintings of fashionable artists were just as relevant to the form Renoir's art took as the paintings of his friends and colleagues. The aim here is to bring out the issues that faced Renoir as he painted La Promenade. The other aspects of his work and that of his friends at this time will play a central part in this account, but the painting will be ana- lyzed in a broader frame throughout. What did it mean to paint a picture like La Promenade in France in 1870, in the final months of Napoleon Ill's Second Empire? Instead of beginning with the artist and proceeding toward the picture, this study will start with the picture and only at the end ask what it reveals about Renoir as a man and artist. 3