Paintings

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted for nearly sixty years, and the pictures resist a single formula. The river views and sociable scenes of the 1870s made him central to Impressionism. Portraits brought him clients and an audience at the Salon. From the 1880s he examined earlier art, made more drawings and tested firmer forms, while still returning to landscapes, flowers, children and light. Late paintings from Cagnes have their own handling and subjects.

This collection helps readers find a particular painting and compare it with others. The works are arranged below as an image browse list, while this introduction points out the questions that make those images more than an unbroken sequence of titles. A date or title is not always fixed across museums and older catalogues; where versions exist, the current holder's record is the most reliable starting point.

Contents

1. Painting outdoors with Monet
2. Crowds, leisure and the city
3. Portraiture as work and experiment
4. Dance paintings and the changing 1880s
5. Drawing and The Great Bathers
6. Music, children and domestic scenes
7. Landscapes and late figures
8. How three major paintings entered public collections
9. Browse Renoir paintings

Watch: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Explore a Montmartre dance, a gathering beside the Seine and the drawings behind Renoir’s paintings.

Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette

Smarthistory

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker discuss Renoir’s 1876 Montmartre dance scene, its light and its crowds.

Watch on YouTube

▶01 · Montmartre danceDance at Le Moulin de la GaletteSmarthistory▶02 · Riverside gatheringLuncheon of the Boating PartySmarthistory▶03 · Working processRenoir and drawingThe Morgan Library & Museum

Painting outdoors with Monet

Renoir's friendship with Claude Monet began in Charles Gleyre's studio and continued outdoors. At La Grenouillère, a swimming and boating place on the Seine, they worked on related views in 1869. Their separate canvases show what collaboration can mean in painting. Both had to find ways to describe water, trees, people and light in a changing scene; each organized the people and reflections differently. The visible stroke is a way of building the picture, not a signature that erases the individual choices of the painter.

Argenteuil gave them a further set of subjects. Renoir's Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil of 1873 depicts his friend at an easel. The Wadsworth Atheneum identifies it as 1957.614. Monet's own The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil, also dated 1873, shows a different view of flowers, people and the house and belongs to the National Gallery of Art. Putting them together shows the garden as a place where painting, friendship and domestic space met. It does not make them two versions of one canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum, collection education guide ^[1]; National Gallery of Art, Monet's garden. ^[2]

In Regatta at Argenteuil of 1874, now at the National Gallery of Art, Renoir makes the river itself a broad blue field across which small boats and people are distributed. The museum notes that parts of the tan canvas show through the thin paint in the sky and water. That physical fact matters: the brightness is not achieved only by adding white or yellow pigment. In this work, prepared support and light applications of paint contribute to the effect.

Crowds, leisure and the city

Renoir's 1870s modern-life pictures brought together subjects often separated in traditional painting: people in fashionable dress, commercial entertainment, fleeting expressions and ambitious composition. La Loge places a woman at the theatre before the viewer while a man behind her uses binoculars. Attention becomes the subject: who sees, who is seen, and who controls the act of looking?

Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette gives a more open setting but an even denser arrangement. Painted in 1876 and shown at the 1877 Impressionist exhibition, it represents a dance venue in Montmartre. Sunlit patches pass across faces, clothes and ground, yet the picture is held together by carefully placed groups. The Musée d'Orsay's recent research identifies some people in the artist's circle and explains that Renoir worked at the venue and probably completed parts in his studio. Looking immediate and being made quickly are different things.

The terrace in Luncheon of the Boating Party is another deliberate gathering. People lean, turn, converse and look away at the Restaurant Fournaise. The canvas offers pleasures of a day beside the Seine, but it also makes a complex arrangement from overlapping bodies, the table and the balcony's diagonal rail. A Phillips Collection technical study reveals revisions beneath its finished surface. What looks like one uninterrupted moment was worked out over time.

These paintings can be admired for pleasure and colour without treating them as transparent reports on everyday Paris. Renoir selected sitters and constructed scenes. Their harmony is something the picture makes, not proof that all relationships in the depicted world were harmonious.

Portraiture as work and experiment

Renoir painted friends, relatives, artists, children and paying clients. A portrait needs a likeness, but it also asks how clothing, setting, pose and paint can shape the viewer's understanding of a person. Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children, painted in 1878 and shown at the 1879 Salon, helped establish him with a wider audience. Its modern domestic setting and fashionable subjects sit within a composition the Met calls rigorous. The portrait shows why “independent artist” and “commissioned portrait painter” were compatible roles.

The faces of children gave Renoir another set of problems. In Julie Manet of 1887, often called Child with Cat, the sitter holds a cat while her pale dress and patterned surroundings soften the formal distance of a commissioned likeness. Her parents, Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, commissioned it. Other child pictures have different histories. The Art Institute of Chicago's scholarly catalogue discusses both named portraits and domestic images; the title alone should not turn an unidentified model into a member of Renoir's household.

Renoir's portraits of fellow artists form another network. His Claude Monet of 1872, now in the National Gallery of Art, pictures the painter reading and smoking rather than painting at an easel. An Art Institute portrait of Alfred Sisley, dated 1876, uses varied, small marks of colour to give form to the sitter. In these works, friendship becomes an artistic subject, but each object has its own history and material character.

Patronage beyond portraits: Wargemont

A patron could provide more than a portrait commission. The Met's account says Renoir met the banker Paul Bérard through Madame Charpentier, painted Bérard's children and became a regular visitor to the family's Normandy home at Wargemont. There he worked across genres. The connection between a client and an artist therefore helps explain where some landscapes and still lifes were made, but it does not make every Wargemont picture a commissioned portrait. Met, Renoir biography. ^[3]

The Met's View of the Seacoast near Wargemont in Normandy (1880, 56.135.7) was painted outdoors near Bérard's house. Its museum record stresses Renoir's quick response to changing coastal light. That scene shows him still working directly from landscape at a time when he was also developing elaborate figure groups. Its steep coast and open weather make a useful counterpart to the sheltered sociability of the Fournaise pictures. Met, View of the Seacoast. ^[4]

Two 1881 peach still lifes made at Wargemont allow a more exact comparison of repetition. Both show the family's faïence jardinière, but the Met calls them paintings in contrasting colour harmonies. Bérard bought Still Life with Peaches and Grapes (56.218) for himself; Still Life with Peaches (61.101.12) appeared in the 1882 Impressionist exhibition. They are separate canvases with separate early paths, not two catalogue titles for one work. Together with the seascape, they show how a country visit could yield open-air study, arrangements of household objects and paintings for different audiences. Met, Peaches and Grapes ^[5]; Met, Peaches. ^[6]

Dance paintings and the changing 1880s

Three large dance pictures of the early 1880s invite close comparison: Dance in the City and Dance in the Country, both at the Musée d'Orsay, and Dance at Bougival at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The pairing of city and country is deliberate; the visible differences of dress, colour and surroundings distinguish social settings and pictorial moods. They also show why version control matters. A similarly titled later copy or study is not automatically the same painting as the object in a museum record.

Renoir travelled in Italy from 1881 and began to reassess the degree of firmness he wanted in the figure. The 1880s paintings do not divide neatly into “before Italy” and “after Italy.” The Umbrellas is especially instructive because the National Gallery's technical study demonstrates stages of execution with noticeably different handling. Paint evidence and X-radiographs make a layered process visible; the interpretation is stronger than a style label inferred from looking alone.

He also continued to make flower paintings, landscapes and small portraits. The Art Institute of Chicago notes six still lifes in Durand-Ruel's 1883 exhibition of seventy Renoir works. Chrysanthemums offers a case where a more structured floral composition still depends on subtle colour. A genre often treated as decoration was part of the artist's continuing formal experiment.

Studies made outdoors and scenes composed indoors

The word “landscape” does not tell us whether Renoir painted the finished canvas outside. In late summer 1883, he made about fifteen views around Moulin Huet Bay on Guernsey. The Met's Hills around the Bay of Moulin Huet (56.135.9) belongs to that campaign; its record relates it to three other signed and dated views and says it was probably among four Guernsey landscapes sold to Durand-Ruel that autumn. The bay was a repeat subject with variations in vantage and finish, not one fixed view copied over and over. Met, Hills around the Bay of Moulin Huet. ^[7]

The Met's By the Seashore (1883, 29.100.125) shows a different process. Its current catalogue says Renoir likely posed the model in his studio and drew on earlier Normandy coast studies for the beach behind her. The woman's carefully defined face and smoother paint sit against a more freely brushed shore. The museum connects this difference to Renoir's search for firmer forms after his Italian journey. A coastline in a picture can therefore be remembered or reconstructed, while a portrait figure is studied separately; the painted scene need not document a single outdoor sitting. Met, By the Seashore. ^[8]

Drawing and The Great Bathers

The Great Bathers, worked on from 1884 to 1887 and now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, makes the value of studying a painting's preparation clear. Renoir made numerous drawings for individual figures and at least two large studies with multiple figures. An Art Institute chalk study of a splashing woman shows the depth of his work on form and movement. The final painting places bodies with firmer, sculptural contours against a more shimmering landscape.

The result was neither a straightforward return to academic convention nor another 1870s outdoor scene. Renoir was testing how a large figure picture could carry the weight of older art while retaining some of the light and colour he had learned to make visible. The painting took years. Its reception made it a difficult turning point, and the exact object should be distinguished from the many later Renoir bathers on smaller canvases or in other museums. Read the Great Bathers article and explore the drawings.

Music, children and domestic scenes

By the 1890s Renoir was making pictures of children at play and at music. The Girls at the Piano group was especially consequential: the French state acquired a version for the Musée du Luxembourg, a mark of official recognition during the artist's lifetime. The subject exists in several versions, so comparisons need exact holders, sizes and dates.

Pictures of Renoir's own sons and members of the household also became more frequent. Jean appears in an Art Institute portrait Jean Renoir Sewing of 1899/1900. The catalogue considers the picture as a child portrait and compares it with another version at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. The formal differences in light and background are significant. A domestic subject did not mean that the artist stopped experimenting with paint.

Landscapes and late figures

Landscape remained a recurring subject even as his large figure paintings changed. The Art Institute's study of Grove of Trees, a watercolour from 1888/90, places it beside renewed landscape work in southern France and his friendship with Cézanne. Although it is a work on paper, its colour and small strokes help complicate the claim that Renoir abandoned open-air effects after Italy. The painting pages include seashores, fields, townscapes and the countryside around Cagnes as well as formal figure subjects.

In later decades Renoir returned often to nude bathers. Bathers of 1918–19 in the Musée d'Orsay is separate from Philadelphia's The Great Bathers of the 1880s. Their similar English titles make this one of the most important identity checks in the collection. The late picture belongs to a different period, scale and set of aims. It should be read alongside the artist's continuing portraits and landscapes, not as a duplicate of an earlier attempt.

The Musée d'Orsay's account of its late Bathers (RF 2795) gives that distinction a concrete setting. It identifies two reclining foreground models and three figures by the stream as having posed in the olive-filled garden at Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-Mer. The finished painting, however, removes signs of a contemporary visit and presents a timeless Mediterranean scene. Orsay records that Renoir's three sons gave the canvas to the French state in 1923. These details connect real models and a known garden to an intentionally invented world, while fixing the late work's identity and first public transfer. Musée d'Orsay, Les Baigneuses. ^[9]

Late portraiture remained ambitious too. In 1914 the actress Tilla Durieux sat for Renoir in Paris wearing a costume designed by Paul Poiret for her performance in Pygmalion. The Met's portrait (61.101.13) places her in a pyramidal composition. The museum's record describes Renoir's physical difficulty at the time, yet the picture is a constructed public image of a performer, not simply evidence of decline. It belongs beside the late bathers when asking what he still chose to paint. Met, Tilla Durieux. ^[10]

How three major paintings entered public collections

The paintings in this directory reached today's museums by different paths. Bal du moulin de la Galette was still in the collection of Renoir's fellow painter Gustave Caillebotte when Caillebotte died in 1894. The French state accepted it through his bequest in 1896; it passed through the Luxembourg, Louvre and Jeu de Paume before being assigned to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986. This was a later public acquisition of a picture already shown at the 1877 Impressionist exhibition, not a state commission to Renoir. Musée d'Orsay, Bal du moulin de la Galette, provenance. ^[11]

Young Girls at the Piano followed a different course. The Musée d'Orsay says friends and admirers objected that the state had not yet bought a Renoir. After an informal administrative commission, the state purchased the 1892 painting from the artist for the Musée du Luxembourg. Orsay's record identifies its own canvas as RF 755 and gives the acquisition order of 21 September 1892. It also records three other finished versions, an oil sketch and a pastel related to the composition. Their number helps explain why a familiar image in a catalogue cannot be assigned to the state-owned canvas on title alone. The holder and object number matter when looking through a gallery in which Renoir returned to a subject. Musée d'Orsay, Jeunes filles au piano, RF 755. ^[12]

Luncheon of the Boating Party entered an American museum through a private purchase. The Phillips Collection records that Duncan Phillips acquired it in 1923 and displayed it in Washington that December. Its archival account specifies a purchase from the Durand-Ruel family's private collection. This route differs from both Caillebotte's bequest and the French state's direct acquisition. Taken together, the three records show why a present museum label is only the latest point in a painting's history. Phillips Collection, Luncheon of the Boating Party ^[13]; Phillips exhibition archive. ^[14]

The site collection below follows the established painting routes. Use a painting's own page for collection, date, provenance and a closer reading. Biography sets out the life; style and technique explains the changing methods; drawings shows how studies and finished pictures relate.

Browse Renoir paintings

Renoir artworks directory

147 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
Luncheon of the Boating Party	1880–81	Painting
Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette	1876	Painting
Dance at Bougival	1883	Painting
The Umbrellas	c. 1881–86	Painting
Girl with a Watering Can	1876	Painting
Woman with a Cat		Painting
Two Sisters on the Terrace	1881	Painting
The Bathers		Painting
La Grenouillère	1869	Painting
La Loge	1874	Painting
Alfred Sisley		Painting
Bather		Painting
Bather with Long Hair		Painting
Bathers in the Forest		Painting
Boating at Argenteuil		Painting
By the Seashore		Painting
Cagnes Landscape		Painting
Camille Monet and her Son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil		Painting
Charles le Coeur		Painting
Child with a Whip		Painting
Child with Cat (Julie Manet)	1887	Painting
Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris		Painting
Claude Monet the Reader		Painting
Cliffs on the Coast near Pourville		Painting
Dance in the City	1883	Painting
Figures on the Beach	1890	Painting
Flowers in a Vase		Painting
Frederic Bazille Painting the Heron		Painting
Girl and Cat		Painting
Girl Crocheting		Painting
Girl with a Hoop		Painting
Girls on the Seashore		Painting
Jeanne Samary in a Low Necked Dress		Painting
L'Estaque		Painting
La Grenouillere II		Painting
Landscape in La Roche Guyon		Painting
Landscape near Essoyes		Painting
Madame Claude Monet		Painting
Madame Monet Reading		Painting
Marie Therese Durand Ruel Sewing		Painting
Monet Painting in his Garden at Argenteuil	1873	Painting
Mount Sainte Victoire		Painting
Nude Bather Seated by the Sea		Painting
Nude Boys on the Rocks at Guernsey		Painting
Odalisque		Painting
On the Seine near Argenteuil		Painting
Onions		Painting
Paul Cezanne		Painting
Pears and Apples		Painting
Pierre Henri Renoir		Painting
Pink and Blue	1881	Painting
Pont Neuf		Painting
Portrait of Claude Monet		Painting
Portrait of Madame Claude Monet		Painting
Portrait of Victor Chocquet		Painting
Rocks at L'Estaque		Painting
Rocky Craggs at L'Estaque		Painting
Roses in a Vase		Painting
Sailboats at Argenteuil		Painting
Sailor Boy Portrait of Robert Nunes		Painting
Seated Bather		Painting
Self Portrait I		Painting
Self Portrait II		Painting
Self Portrait III		Painting
Self Portrait with a White Hat		Painting
Spring Bouquet		Painting
Steps in Algiers		Painting
Still Life Flowers and Fruit		Painting
Still Life with Carafe		Painting
Still Life with Pomegranates		Painting
Summer Landscape		Painting
The Banks of the Seine		Painting
The Bathers II		Painting
The Bathrobe		Painting
The Bridge at Chatou		Painting
The Cafe		Painting
The Canoeist's Luncheon		Painting
The Church at Essoyes		Painting
The Dancer		Painting
The Daughters of Paul Durand Ruel Marie Theresa and Jeanne		Painting
The Garden of Essai in Algiers		Painting
The Garden		Painting
The Harem Parisian Women Dressed as Algerians		Painting
The Harvesters		Painting
The Large Bathers	1884–87	Painting
The Little Algerian Girl		Painting
The Little Theatre Box		Painting
The Painter Alfred Sisley		Painting
The Piazza san Marco		Painting
The Seine at Argenteuil		Painting
The Seine at Asnieres the Skiff		Painting
The Seine at Chatou		Painting
The Skiff II		Painting
The Spanish Guitarist		Painting
The Thinker		Painting
The Varangeville Church and the Cliffs		Painting
Two Sisters		Painting
Two Young Girls Reading		Painting
Vase of Chrysanthemums		Painting
Vase of Lilacs and Roses		Painting
Venetian Gondola		Painting
View of Venice Fog		Painting
Village by the Sea		Painting
Woman Playing the Guitar		Painting
Woman with Parasol		Painting
Young Girl Reading		Painting
Young Girl with a Parasol (Aline Nunes)		Painting
Young Woman in Bright Blue at the Conservatory		Painting
Blonde Bather (1881)		Painting
Dance in the Country	1883	Painting
Girls at the Piano	1892	Painting
The Bathers (1918-1919)	1918–19	Painting
Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children	1878	Painting
The Swing	1876	Painting
Lise with a Parasol	1867	Painting
Two Young Girls at the Piano		Painting
At the Theatre	1878	Painting
Portrait of Mademoiselle Irene Cahen d'Anvers	1880	Painting
Female Nude (1876)		Painting
Children's Afternoon at Wargemont		Painting
Reclining Nude from the Back, Rest after the Bath		Painting
Female Nude Lying on a Bed		Painting
La Promenade	1870	Painting
Young Boy with a Cat		Painting
Two Girls Reading (1885–1893)		Painting
Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)		Painting
Oarsmen at Chatou		Painting
A Nymph by a Stream		Painting
The Reader (Young Woman Reading a Book)		Painting
Girl Reading		Painting
Woman at the Piano		Painting
Young Women in Black		Painting
Nude in the Sun	c. 1876	Painting
In Summer		Painting
Young Woman with a Blue Ribbon		Painting
The Descent from the Summit - Jean Martin Steadies Helene, the Banker's Daughter		Drawing
On the Terrace of a Hotel in Bordighera - The Painter Jean Martin Reviews his Bill		Drawing
Woman Seated in a Chair		Drawing
Splashing Figure (Study for The Large Bathers)		Drawing
Bather, 1885		Drawing
Studies of Trees and Foliage		Drawing
Studies of Trees and Foliage (1884/87)		Drawing
Three Bathers by the Water		Drawing
Two Nude Women, (Study for The Great Bathers)		Drawing
Study for Bathers in the Forest		Drawing
Sheet of Studies		Drawing
Study of a Tree		Drawing

References

1. Wadsworth Atheneum, collection education guide, identifying Renoir's Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873), 1957.614 View source.
2. National Gallery of Art, Monet's The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil View source.
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cindy Kang, “Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)” View source.
4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, View of the Seacoast near Wargemont in Normandy , 56.135.7 View source.
5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Still Life with Peaches and Grapes , 56.218 View source.
6. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Still Life with Peaches , 61.101.12 View source.
7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hills around the Bay of Moulin Huet, Guernsey , 56.135.9 View source.
8. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, By the Seashore , 29.100.125 View source.
9. Musée d'Orsay, Les Baigneuses, 1918–19, RF 2795 View source.
10. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tilla Durieux , 61.101.13 View source.
11. Musée d'Orsay, Bal du moulin de la Galette , RF 2739 View source.
12. Musée d'Orsay, Jeunes filles au piano , RF 755 View source.
13. The Phillips Collection, Luncheon of the Boating Party View source.
14. The Phillips Collection, Impressionists on the Seine exhibition archive View source.
15. Commons View source.
16. CC BY-SA 4.0 View source.
17. Commons View source.
18. Public Domain View source.
19. Commons View source.
20. Commons source View source.
21. Primary image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.206. The Gallery marks its image public domain View source.
22. Musée d'Orsay, Renoir et l'amour presentation View source.
23. Musée d'Orsay, Bal du moulin de la Galette study View source.
24. National Gallery of Art, Regatta at Argenteuil View source.
25. National Gallery of Art, Claude Monet View source.
26. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children View source.
27. The Phillips Collection, Luncheon of the Boating Party technical study View source.
28. National Gallery, The Umbrellas View source.
29. National Gallery, technical bulletin View source.
30. Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Sisley View source.
31. Art Institute of Chicago, Chrysanthemums View source.
32. Art Institute of Chicago, Splashing Figure View source.
33. Art Institute of Chicago, Grove of Trees View source.
34. Art Institute of Chicago, Jean Renoir Sewing View source.
35. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Great Bathers View source.

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