Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted courtship more than any other Impressionist, and the National Gallery gathers forty of his paintings from around the world, to 31 January 2027.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted love more than any other Impressionist. The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square gives the subject its winter show from Saturday 3 October 2026 to Sunday 31 January 2027.
Renoir was born in Limoges in 1841 and started as a porcelain painter, decorating plates. He brought that trade’s fluency into the Impressionist group: flushed skin and dappled light through leaves.
In his forties he went to Italy and decided the Impressionist method had run its course. He painted differently for the rest of his career.
The show covers the 1860s to the 1880s, the two decades usually counted as his peak. Its forty paintings come from collections across the world, and the gallery organised it with the Musée d’Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Among the loans is Bal au Moulin de la Galette, the 1876 dance-hall scene, in its first appearance in Britain. It hangs beside Dance at Bougival and Lunch at Restaurant Fournaise, the show’s account of Renoir at his most sociable.