example]. It presents a recognizable world whose characters can be identified in social terms and whose actions are clearly presented. Nothing in the picture demonstrates whether the woman will follow the man where he seeks to lead her, but the scenario and the suggestion of the possibility of a secretive sexual encounter are unambiguous. In these terms La Promenade is comparable to the fashionable genre paintings of the Stevens/Toulmouche type. Where it differs from them is in the social world it depicts. These are not intrigues among the haute bourgeoisie or the lavishly endowed lorettes of Paris. Rather, this is a more modest and less etiquette-dominated world, the semibohemian sphere of the canotler and his camarade. He can be imagined in his weekday life as a petit bourgeois, and she as one of the legendary grisettes, the good-hearted girls so common in the mythology of bohemian life in Paris who were interested in handsome young men for their charm, not their money.65 The informality of the social life that the picture presents is comple- mented by the informality of its technique. This must now be examined before Renoir's position in the Parisian art world in 1870 can be evaluated. 60