iNational GalleryWest End
Renoir and Love
The most significant UK exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 20 years, tracing love and affection in his art, including 'Dance at the Moulin de la Galette'.
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Look at the ground under the couple in Dance at Bougival (1883): broken clay pipes and cigarette ends, the kind of litter David Hockney gleefully pointed out to the Guardian's Jonathan Jones. Renoir painted people enjoying themselves, and this show gathers 45 paintings from the two decades, mid-1860s to mid-1880s, when more than a third of his canvases were about flirting, dancing, lunching and family.
The rooms run broadly in order, from Mother Antony's Tavern (1866) through courtship scenes, café streets, riverside dances and family life, ending on The Great Bathers, where he turns away from Impressionism. Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, lent by the Musée d'Orsay, is in the UK for the first time and gets a wall to itself.
Jones called it "the happiest art exhibition of the year", with The Great Bathers his one reservation. Artlyst noted the show doesn't take on the old charge that Renoir is too pretty. For a first date, 45 paintings of flirting beat Hinge small talk. Under-18s go free.
Editor's pick
A show built entirely around how Renoir painted intimacy: couples, dancers, families at leisure. Better first-date material than anything on Hinge.
Look for
Dance at the Moulin de la Galette
Its first UK showing, on its own wall in Room 2; up close, Country & Town House says, separate conversations surface from the crowd.
The two dancing couples
Dance at Bougival and Dance in the Country hang side by side, both pairs caught mid-turn.
The Umbrellas
The National Gallery's own picture, reworked over several years, so it holds both his loose early style and his harder later one.
The gloomy self-portrait
The first thing you see is Renoir around 1875, dark-eyed and haggard against a murky brown background.
The Skiff
One woman rows another across bright water; the curators cite a Maupassant story to suggest it may be a lesbian scene.
Good for
- Dates
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You find Renoir saccharine: Artlyst says the show doesn't engage the case against him.
With kids
Under-18s go free. During October half-term the Gallery runs free family sessions, including a storytelling walk, Stories in the Gallery: A walk with Renoir.
Free in the same building
- East Wing: 1700–1900From Turner and Constable to Monet, Renoir, Seurat, and Van Gogh's Sunflowers: Romanticism through Post-Impressionism.
- North Wing: 1600–1700Baroque masters in full force: Rembrandt, Rubens, Caravaggio, Velázquez, and Vermeer across the seventeenth century.
- Sainsbury Wing: 1250–1500Medieval and Early Renaissance masterpieces (Botticelli, van Eyck, Piero della Francesca) in the gallery's landmark wing.
- West Wing: 1500–1600Italian High Renaissance at its peak (Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian) alongside German and Flemish masters.
Also at National Gallery
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Renoir and LoveCourtesy of National Gallery
- Gillian Wearing: Spiritual FamilyGillian Wearing ('Me as Warhol in Drag with Scar'), by Gillian Wearing, 2010, NPG P2104 © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles
- Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
- Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and LegendsCourtesy of National Portrait Gallery
- National GalleryCarlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- London Transport MuseumColin Park / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Churchill War RoomsJenny Poole / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Royal Academy of ArtsYair Haklai / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0