by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 2, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The Umbrellas looks, at first, like a moment caught as rain interrupts a Paris street. People close in around the viewer; opened umbrellas overlap so densely that the road almost disappears. A young woman carrying a large hat box turns toward us from the left. On the right, a child grips a hoop as her mother and sister move with her through the crowd. Yet the apparent instant took Renoir years to complete. The National Gallery dates the painting to about 1881–86 and has shown through technical study that he returned to the canvas after a substantial interval. National Gallery object record. [1]
The visible difference in handling is part of its appeal. The women and children on the right have softer, more flickering edges. The woman on the left has a sharply drawn face and a dress described by longer, firmer lines. It would be tempting to call one side an Impressionist picture and the other a later classical one. That is too tidy. The woman on the left was present in the first stage too; Renoir painted over much of her original appearance. What we see is a single picture that preserves different decisions within its surface. Roy, Billinge and Riopelle, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 33 (2012). [2]
At a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir
- TitleThe Umbrellas (Les Parapluies)
- DateAbout 1881–86
- MediumOil on canvas
- Dimensions180.3 × 114.9 cm
- CollectionNational Gallery, London, inventory NG3268; Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
The date range is a useful guide to the object. It does not say that Renoir worked continuously for five years. The National Gallery identifies an earlier phase around 1881 and a later one from about 1885. The exact days of his decisions were not recorded; the phases emerge from the clothes represented, the paint layers and scientific imaging. National Gallery catalogue [1]; technical study. [3]
This work in Renoir’s career
La Grenouillère
1869La Loge
1874The Umbrellas
c. 1881–86The Great Bathers
1884–87The Bathers
1918–19Contents
- Annotated details of the painting
- What do we see in the street?
- A canopy made of overlapping shapes
- Why the painting has two dates
- What the paint can tell us
- A shift in Renoir's practice
- Two other pictures to look beside it
- The New York display
- From Renoir to Hugh Lane
- How to look again
Annotated Details from The Umbrellas
Renoir crowds this tall street scene with overlapping umbrellas and contrasting figures. The numbered details follow its visible composition; conservation research explains which parts were reworked years later.
Details from THE UMBRELLAS
The visible detail crops are taken from a licensed whole-work photograph. Descriptions of hidden paint layers rely on the National Gallery's X-ray, infrared and pigment study, not on the ordinary surface photograph.
Dress and bandbox
A broad bandbox curves across the woman's grey-blue dress. The National Gallery interprets her as a milliner's assistant; technical study shows that Renoir repainted her earlier hat and frilled dress.
The bearded man
A man with an umbrella leans behind the woman at left. National Gallery researchers consider him a likely addition during the later reworking, although the evidence is not conclusive.
The mother
The mother's dark blue clothing and softer modelling belong largely to the earlier phase. Her angled head links the umbrella canopy to the children below.
The child and hoop
The younger child grips a hoop and stick while looking outward. Its warm curve echoes the bandbox on the opposite side of the crowded foreground.
Looking up
A woman in profile looks up and holds an umbrella shaft. Her gesture turns the eye from the foreground figures toward the overhead canopy.
The umbrella canopy
Blue-grey umbrella shapes overlap across the upper image, organising the crowd. Pigment evidence associates their present surfaces primarily with Renoir's later phase.
Foliage and kiosk
Green and orange foliage and a small warm-toned structure interrupt the field of cool umbrellas. The technical study identifies changes beneath this upper-left passage.
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What do we see in the street?
The tall canvas puts the crowd at almost full length. At the lower left the woman in a grey-blue dress lifts her skirt with one hand and carries a broad, open bandbox on the other arm. Her uncovered hair and direct gaze separate her from people sheltered by hats and umbrellas. The box is the kind used for hats. The National Gallery describes her as a milliner's assistant, an interpretation supported by that object and her simpler dress, though the picture gives no documentary name or job record for the person represented. National Gallery object essay. [1]
Just behind her, a bearded man tilts forward with an umbrella. His glance seems to follow her, but the exact relation between the two is left open. Renoir makes viewers aware of a possible encounter without giving them its outcome. The woman looks beyond the crowd toward us instead of returning his gaze. That break in the surrounding bustle makes her the picture's strongest point of contact with the viewer.
The family at the right creates another kind of encounter. A mother in a deep blue costume bends toward her two daughters. The younger child looks forward while holding a hoop and stick; a hand on her shoulder helps keep the group together in the press of bodies. The older girl is cut by the canvas edge. These figures bring movement to a scene in which few feet have much room to move. The child and the milliner's assistant face outward from opposite sides of the painting, giving the composition two anchors below the umbrellas.
Between the two groups a woman seen in profile looks up while holding an umbrella shaft. Her lifted head and hands direct attention from the foreground bodies toward the canopy. Behind her, a succession of faces and shoulders is partially hidden. Renoir does not map a street with a clear far view. He layers people in front of other people until the crowd itself becomes the setting. Small glimpses of pale ground, foliage and buildings are enough to suggest outdoors. National Gallery object essay. [1]
A canopy made of overlapping shapes
At least a dozen umbrellas fill much of the upper portion of the image. Their rounded tops repeat with changes of scale and angle. Some lean toward the viewer; others recede behind a head or an arm. Handles and spokes lead downward into the crowd, linking the seemingly separate groups. This repetition gives order to what could have been a tangle of figures. National Gallery object essay. [1]
The umbrella fabric is painted in varied greys and blues rather than a uniform black. A touch of orange on a small distant structure, green foliage and warm faces interrupt the cool field. In the lower part, the golden bandbox and hoop make two curved shapes among straighter dresses and legs. The box also gives the woman a practical reason to be in the street: she appears to be carrying something through the shower. These colour and shape relationships matter even if the viewer knows nothing of the painting's hidden revisions.
The canvas is unusually vertical for such a crowded modern-life subject. Renoir brings the top of the picture close to the umbrella canopy and presses the figures against the lower edge. There is little open space in which to imagine an easy escape. The family and the working woman share a physical street, while their clothes, gestures and objects suggest different social circumstances. The scene invites a comparison without proving a particular social narrative about any one model.
Why the painting has two dates
Research by the National Gallery distinguishes two major episodes of work: an initial campaign around 1881, then an extensive return around 1885. Fashion history first helped scholars recognise that difference. The women's dresses on the right fit styles current around 1881–82; the severe, straighter dress worn by the finished figure on the left belongs to a later moment, around 1885–86. Dress is useful evidence but cannot by itself show where one paint layer ends and another begins. National Gallery catalogue [1]; technical bulletin, pp. 73–75. [3]
X-radiography and microscopic examination of paint cross-sections add the physical record. In the first version the left-hand woman had a more elaborate, tiered skirt, lace at the neck and wrists, and a hat. Renoir repainted her in the plainer outfit now visible and replaced the softer handling with firmer drawing. The X-ray makes the earlier hat apparent; a cross-section from her hair records its purple-red paint below the later surface. We cannot see that buried colour by looking at the finished picture, but it helps establish that the seemingly assured final figure is a revision. National Gallery technical bulletin, pp. 75–77. [3]
The two stages do not divide the painting along a clean central line. Renoir first painted the group at the right and an earlier version of the woman at the left. Later work altered her, expanded or revised figures in the middle distance, and developed the umbrella canopy. Some right-hand passages changed as well: the conservators describe adjustments to the upward-looking woman's head, hands and umbrella, and to an older child's foot. The early stage was already a process of correction. National Gallery technical bulletin, pp. 75–80. [3]
What the paint can tell us
The National Gallery's researchers found a revealing change in Renoir's materials. Earlier blue passages contain cobalt blue; later ones use French ultramarine. The detailed analytical paper identifies the earlier yellow as zinc yellow (zinc potassium chromate) and the later one as Naples yellow. The Gallery's shorter object essay instead says “chrome yellow” for the early phase; this article follows the paper's more specific pigment identification. Because these materials appear across the canvas, analysis of a layer can help assign it to one working period. The conclusion rests on paint samples and imaging, not simply on an impression that the left looks darker than the right. Technical bulletin abstract [2]; full study, pp. 73–78 [3]; National Gallery object essay. [1]
This evidence is particularly useful for the umbrellas. Their grey-blue fabric contains the later ultramarine. Infrared imaging reveals lines with which Renoir laid out several curving umbrella forms; some of those lines were followed and others were revised. Researchers therefore consider most of the canopy and its middle-distance bearers developments of the later phase. There was, however, earlier paint beneath parts of the upper field. The current rain scene was built over a prior, less settled design; it was not simply appended to a finished lower half. National Gallery technical bulletin, pp. 76–78. [3]
The man behind the left woman is another example of how evidence can revise an interpretation. Earlier scholars thought he might have belonged to the first stage. New infrared examination and a processed X-ray led the National Gallery team to judge that he was probably introduced when Renoir reworked the woman. Her concealed earlier hat extends beneath the area of his face. The researchers explicitly stop short of calling that proof beyond doubt. It is fair to say that the man likely came later, not that a scan has identified the moment Renoir invented him. National Gallery technical bulletin, pp. 76–77. [3]
There are still unresolved details. The technical study notes paint on the canvas margins that may mean Renoir altered the picture's format between stages. An infrared image shows a ruled line across the upper background, but its purpose is uncertain. These are useful reminders that scientific images give access to physical traces; deciding exactly why an artist made each mark still requires interpretation. National Gallery technical bulletin, pp. 77–78. [3]
One small building shows how far a seemingly incidental detail could change. The orange roof now glimpsed between umbrellas appears to be a late addition; X-radiography suggests that a larger, pitched-roof structure previously occupied part of that area. Its warm orange against the surrounding blue-grey fabric draws the eye upward even though the building is small in the finished scene. The researchers can identify a changed shape, but they cannot recover a complete street plan from the hidden paint. National Gallery technical bulletin, p. 78. [3]
Foliage in the upper left has its own layered history. The Gallery's X-radiograph shows short diagonal strokes in the visible leaves crossing earlier brushwork that runs the other way. The later foliage lacks the cobalt blue and zinc yellow associated with the first campaign, supporting its assignment to the second. The researchers compare its constructive strokes with Cézanne's painting; they present direct influence as a possibility, rather than a documented encounter at the canvas. The point is not that a scientific scan can name an artistic source. It shows Renoir changing the direction, colour and density of a small background area while he remade the people and umbrellas around it. National Gallery technical bulletin, p. 78. [3]
The upward-looking woman offers a still more tentative possibility. Imaging shows Renoir changed her head, hands and the object she raises. Because its final umbrella fabric contains later French ultramarine, the conservators ask whether the earlier figure might have opened a parasol in sunlight, with the rain scene emerging only during revision. They explicitly present that as conjecture. It is a productive question about the painting's making, not evidence that a complete sunny version once existed. The finished canvas gives us umbrellas; the hidden layers do not preserve a definitive weather report for the first design. National Gallery technical bulletin, p. 78. [3]
A shift in Renoir's practice
During the early 1880s Renoir was reconsidering what he wanted from drawing, modelling and classical art. He travelled in Italy in 1881–82 and studied Renaissance painting and ancient art. The National Gallery connects that journey with his search for clearer form. In The Umbrellas, the reworked left figure gives a concrete example of tighter contours and more defined structure beside softer, luminous figures. National Gallery object essay. [1]
The picture should not be reduced to an illustration of a sudden conversion after Italy. The earlier phase also involved changes, and the later phase did not erase every passage that came before. Renoir kept the contrast visible. We do not know precisely why he accepted it. It may have satisfied him that the street scene still worked as a whole, or he may have valued the figures separately. The holder's account treats his motive as speculation. What survives is stronger evidence of what he changed than of why he stopped changing it.
The National Gallery calls The Umbrellas Renoir's last large vertical composition of contemporary city life before he concentrated more on landscapes, portraits and nudes. That description situates the canvas in his career without making it a farewell letter to the street. Its two campaigns overlap the period in which he was studying older painting and working on more firmly drawn figures. The family at the right, the revised worker at the left and the built-up canopy show those interests sharing one surface. The painting therefore offers unusually direct evidence of transition, but no single date when Renoir ceased to be an Impressionist. National Gallery object essay. [1]
Two other pictures to look beside it
The National Gallery's own technical study points to Renoir's At the Theatre, dated 1876–77, as a comparison for the feathery brushwork visible in the early paint of The Umbrellas. In the smaller theatre painting, the blue clothing of two women and the audience behind them are built with lively touches and soft transitions. The subject is different, but the image helps us recognise the kind of handling Renoir did not entirely remove when he reworked the rainy street. It cannot show us the hidden first version of the bandbox woman's dress; that requires the technical images and samples. National Gallery technical bulletin, p. 75 [3]; At the Theatre, NG3859. [4]
A second comparison is the Frick Collection's La Promenade, painted in 1875–76. This near full-length canvas measures 170.2 × 108.3 cm and shows a woman guiding two similarly dressed girls through a park; the Frick identifies at least eleven more people and two dogs along the path. It was a centrepiece of Renoir's display at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, where contemporary critics gave it little favourable attention. The National Gallery's technical study compares the pale yellow, blue, green and pink paint buried under parts of The Umbrellas with the winding path in this Frick work. That is a comparison of colour and the organisation of a large vertical crowd scene, not a claim that the rainy street was copied from the park. Frick Collection, La Promenade [5]; National Gallery technical study, p. 77. [3]
The title needs care: the Frick's 1875–76 La Promenade, sometimes called Mother and Children, is a different painting from Renoir's earlier La Promenade of 1870. The shared French title alone cannot establish which picture a source or reproduction means. Here the Frick's dimensions, three foreground walkers and collection attribution make the comparison specific.
Dance in the City, dated 1883, offers a view of Renoir's changing priorities during the interval between the street painting's campaigns. The Orsay canvas has almost life-size dancers, a cool interior and a white gown shaped by a more definite outline. Orsay contrasts the pair's precise drawing and simplified palette with Renoir's earlier vibrant brushwork. It is not a preparatory work for The Umbrellas, nor can it date any particular stroke in that canvas. Beside the later bandbox woman, however, it makes the clearer construction of a full-length figure easier to see. Musée d'Orsay, Danse à la ville, RF 1978 13. [6]
The comparison should bring us back to the London canvas, not turn it into a before-and-after diagram. The child's soft face and the bandbox woman's firmer outline occupy one continuous street. The umbrellas above them mostly belong to the later design, but their repeating curves bind the two groups visually. Other paintings can clarify Renoir's range; only examination of The Umbrellas itself establishes its layered history.
One proposed practical reason to finish the painting is an Impressionist exhibition scheduled to open in New York in April 1886. The National Gallery presents this as a likely prompt, not a signed instruction from Renoir. The date fits the later painting phase and the eventual display, but it should not be turned into certainty. National Gallery object essay. [1]
The New York display
The Frick Collection's exhibition chronology identifies The Umbrellas among the Renoirs shown in Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris in New York during April–June 1886, at the American Art Galleries and National Academy of Design. Its chronology gives 18 April–30 June for the two-venue run, while a Frick press release says the American Art Galleries presentation opened on 10 April. Those sources give different start dates, so the month range is safer here than a single opening day. The chronology records the catalogue title as “Rain in Paris.” That title is useful evidence for identifying the picture in the historical list; it does not mean Renoir personally chose those words. The chronology supports a display in the year of the later painting campaign. It does not tell us how New York visitors responded to the picture's stylistic differences. Frick exhibition chronology. [7]
The National Gallery says the planned exhibition likely prompted Renoir to complete the canvas. The distinction between a documented exhibition and a proposed motive matters. We can place the object in the 1886 show, while keeping the reason for its final revisions qualified. A surviving catalogue entry is firmer evidence than a reconstructed conversation in the studio. National Gallery object essay [1]; Frick chronology. [7]
From Renoir to Hugh Lane
Renoir deposited the canvas with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in Paris on 30 April 1890. Durand-Ruel bought it from the artist on 3 February 1892. Those are different transactions: the painting was with the dealer before he acquired it. Sir Hugh Lane bought it from Durand-Ruel on 11 November 1907. It was shown in Dublin's Municipal Gallery from 1908 to 1913 and entered the National Gallery through Lane's 1917 bequest. National Gallery provenance record. [1]
Its later public history joins London and Dublin. The National Gallery describes the work as part of its collection in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery. The technical study notes the 1959 agreement under which paintings from the Lane bequest circulate between the two cities. That shared history is part of why the painting may be encountered in either institution at different times. Check the current holder display information before planning a visit; temporary loans and exhibitions can change its location. National Gallery record [1]; technical bulletin, note 5. [3]
How to look again
Begin at the bandbox and hoop. Both are warm, curved objects carried through a crowd of blue and grey vertical forms. Follow the woman's skirt upward to her face, then move across to the child's face. Their direct looks hold the two sides together. From the mother's umbrella shaft, look into the overlapping canopy, then down toward the man behind the left figure. The eye moves between what is openly visible and what the painting's research has made newly understandable.
Knowing the two-stage story can sharpen that looking. It lets us notice that the soft family group and the more firmly drawn woman are not separate pictures joined accidentally. Renoir worked and reworked one canvas until two phases of his own practice occupied the same Paris street. The crowded image makes time look like a single rainy moment, while its paint records several years of choices.
Questions about The Umbrellas
The National Gallery dates it about 1881–86. Technical research indicates an initial phase around 1881 and extensive reworking from about 1885. The date range describes a stop-and-start making process, not continuous daily work.
It belongs to the National Gallery, London, as NG3268, through the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest and in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. Its physical display can change through loans; consult the holder's current object page before visiting.
Renoir left visible passages from his earlier, softer handling alongside later repainting with clearer outlines. The distinction is not a literal split: the left woman existed in the first stage and was extensively revised, while details on the right changed too.
The National Gallery interprets her as a milliner's assistant carrying a hat box, based on the object and her dress. The painting does not provide a verified personal identity for her.
The canopy in its present form is substantially associated with the later stage; the pigments and infrared lines support that account. Earlier paint survives beneath some upper areas, so “all added at once” oversimplifies the evidence.
Discussion
Look closely at The Umbrellas and use the questions below to compare what you see with the documented history.
Reader Insights
Where does the painting’s handling change most sharply?
The National Gallery’s technical study identifies two stages of work.
Does knowing the sequence change how you read the crowd?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about The Umbrellas. The prompts above are starting points for discussion.
References
- National Gallery, London, The Umbrellas, NG3268, object essay and provenance View source.
- Ashok Roy, “Renoir's Umbrellas Unfurled Again,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 33 (2012) View source.
- Ashok Roy, full research PDF View source.
- National Gallery, At the Theatre , NG3859 View source.
- The Frick Collection, La Promenade (1875–76), distinct large vertical park scene compared with the earlier paint of The Umbrellas in the National Gallery technical study View source.
- National Gallery, Danse à la ville , RF 1978 13 View source.
- The Frick Collection, Renoir exhibition chronology View source.
- The Frick Collection, 2012 press release View source.
- Reproduction used for this article: Wuselig's photograph at the Musée d'Orsay, Wikimedia Commons, CC0. The page credits the photographer and Commons. The National Gallery's technical images are research references, not image assets for this site View source.
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