To mark the 150th anniversary of Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876), Renoir’s masterpiece in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, this exhibition brings together for the first time a major body of work depicting scenes of modern life painted by Renoir during the first twenty years of his career (1865-1885). During this period, he participated in the collective invention of a “New Painting” alongside Manet, Monet, Morisot, Degas, and Caillebotte.

The exhibition highlights Renoir's predilection for depicting young couples. An admirer of 18th-century French painters (Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard), Renoir revived the atmosphere of “fêtes galantes” and promoted an unprecedented form of freedom in morals and gender equality in Paris at the end of the Second Empire and the beginning of the Third Republic.

The exhibition brings together some of the artist’s greatest masterpieces including: La Grenouillère (1869, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) The Umbrellas (1881-1885, London, The National Gallery), La Promenade (1870, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum), Dance at Bouvigal (1883, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-1881), on exceptional loan from the Phillips Collection in Washington.