The National Gallery will stage a major exhibition of the paintings by the famous Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ‘Renoir and Love,’ from October 3, 2026 to January 31, 2027. Featuring over 50 works of the artist, this event is one of the most significant exhibitions of the French Impressionist’s work in the UK for 2 decades.
The exhibition was first initiated by the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and is organized by the Musée d’Orsay, the National Gallery, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It will be shown at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris from March 17 to July 19, 2026; the National Gallery, London from October 3, 2026 to January 31, 2027; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from February 20 to June 13, 2027.
Since the 2007 exhibition, this is the first exhibition that is devoted to the artist at the National Gallery. Having some of the most experimental, ambitious, and admired canvases including the iconic ‘Bal au Moulin de la Galette’ (1876, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris), this event is a remarkable example of an ambitious and rightly planned partnership between international museums.
It will focus on the crucial years of the artist’s career from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. Having said that, the exhibition will trace the evolution of the imagery of affection, seduction, conversation, male camaraderie, and the sociability of the café and theatre, as well as merry-making, flirtation, courtship, and child-rearing in Renoir’s art.
Exhibition co-curator Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, says,
“More than any of his contemporaries, Renoir was committed to chronicling love and friendship and their informal manifestations as keys to modern life. Whether on Parisian streetcorners or in sun-dappled woodlands, he understood that emotion could be as fleeting, as evanescent, as blinding, as his other great and transitory subject, sunlight itself.”
The themes explored in the compositions that are on display are from tender and personal works to beguiling multi-figure compositions of urban and suburban sociability. Several full-length compositions including The Umbrellas show how Renoir develops the theme into paintings ‘worthy of the museum.’ Furthermore, the Dance compositions of Renoir remain universally loved symbols of the French fin-de-siècle. The works from the early 1880s show a clear departure of the artist from the Impressionist style, with its fascination for the play of light, toward more solid, sculptural compositions. However, the themes of friendship and joy in nature remain.
Featured Image: La Conversation Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1878 © Nationalmuseum (Stockholm).
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