Renoir and Love

The Musée d'Orsay, the Mecca of Impressionism, is hosting an exceptional exhibition in spring 2026: Renoir and Love. Co-organised with the National Gallery in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, this unique retrospective brings together some of the most emblematic works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir** (1841-1919) to explore the central place of love in his art.

A modern and luminous vision of feelings

Between 1860 and 1880, Renoir developed a fluid pictorial style, bathed in light and bright colours. He moved away from sentimental or dramatic representations to offer a happy, modest and tender vision of human relationships. His canvases depict couples in modern social settings - ‘guinguettes’, boulevards, gardens - where love expresses itself freely, sometimes on the fringes of bourgeois convention.

Love as a vital force

Far from limiting himself to games of seduction, Renoir embedded his characters in a network of social and emotional interactions: friends, families, children. For him, love is a universal force that connects people to each other and to nature. He drew on the heritage of the “fêtes galantes” of Watteau and Fragonard to reenchant the relationship between men and women, while at the same time raising the question of desire and consent.

An exhibition of manifesto

Through masterpieces such as Luncheon of the Boating Party and Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, the exhibition celebrates a style of painting that was, in the artist's own words, ‘amiable, joyful and pretty’. These scenes of conviviality appear as manifestos against urban isolation and social determinism, while sometimes discreetly hinting at the darker realities of his time.

The pictorial emotions are intense in the museums of the Paris Region.