09-07-2025
Renoir masterpiece to be shown in UK for first time
A Renoir masterpiece is to go on display in Britain for the first time next year.
The National Gallery has announced an exhibition dedicated to the French Impressionist, called Renoir and Love, which will include his Bal du moulin de la Galette.
The 1876 work, featuring people enjoying an outdoor dance in Montmartre, Paris, has a complex history.
It was once owned by Ryoei Saito, a Japanese businessman, who bought it for £67 million in 1990 and expressed his wish to be cremated with it when he died.
The piece was then acquired by the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which will loan it to the National Gallery for the exhibition.
Christopher Riopelle, the exhibition co-curator, said: '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 street corners 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 exhibition will be on from Oct 3 next year until Jan 31 2027.
The National Gallery last focused on Renoir in 2007. A friend of Monet, the painter was among a group of 19th-century French painters who began to depict everyday life and popular leisure activities rather than grand historical and religious themes.
News of the exhibition follows the revelation that the Bayeux Tapestry will be returning to England after 900 years.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president,who is visiting the UK, announced a deal for the British Museum to borrow the artwork in exchange for treasure from the Sutton Hoo ship burial.
The deal marks the realisation of plans initially drawn up in 2018, when Baroness May as prime minister announced a ' cultural exchange ' between the UK and France.
The Renoir exhibition also follows on from the success of the National Gallery's recent Van Gogh exhibition, which attracted more than 300,000 visitors.
