Renoir’s drawings showcased in major exhibition, the first of its kind in over a century

A study for “The Judgment of Paris” ca. 1908 in black, red and white chalk. (The Phillips Collection; Washington, DC/Courtesy The Morgan Library & Museum via CNN Newsource)

New York — Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the leaders of the Impressionist school of painting, established in 1874 by a group of French artists, whose loose brushwork and brightly coloured paints created a sense of spontaneity and modernity. And now, 150 years later, he will return to the spotlight this fall.

“Renoir Drawings,” a major travelling exhibition of over 100 of his drawings and other works, created using mediums including pencil, pen and ink, chalk, pastel, watercolour, etching and lithography, will be on display at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York from October 17 to February 8, 2026, and then at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris from March 17 to July 5, 2026.

Although Renoir’s landscapes and portraits — of the French countryside and high society — are legendary worldwide, his drawings of these subjects are not well-known, particularly to the public. One reason: The last major exhibition of Renoir’s drawings took place at the Galeries Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1921.

To illustrate Renoir’s creative process, several of his major paintings will be reunited with and displayed alongside their related drawings. All seven preparatory drawings for the artist’s renowned painting, “The Great Bathers” (1884-1887), and the painting itself will be shown in New York, while “Dance in the Country” (1883), owned by the Musée d’Orsay, will be shown with preparatory drawings both in New York and Paris.

A relatable view

An 1886-1887 red and while chalk study of “The Great Bathers,” donated to the Morgan Library in 2018 by Drue Heinz, the late American actress-turned-cultural philanthropist, inspired the exhibition, according to Colin Bailey, the director of the Morgan Library & Museum, and one of the show’s curators.

Speaking to CNN, Bailey said, “I was at a dinner with many people at Mrs. Heinz’s house in the early 2000s. It was my first time there and I remembered looking into the hallway and seeing this stunning large drawing of two nude figures by Renoir. We were not ‘touring’ the collection, but I guess it just stayed in my mind, and this was why I proposed it as a candidate for a gift from her estate.”

Bailey said the drawing was the catalyst that led him to conversations with the Musée d’Orsay about a possible Renoir drawing exhibition. However, the 2020 pandemic delayed its organization. This delay subsequently helped the museums to identify and locate Renoir drawings not owned by public institutions — and also convince the Philadelphia Art Museum to lend “The Great Bathers” for the show. (Previously, the painting was on a restricted list of works that could not travel because of their donors’ instructions. This restriction was eased three years ago.)

Among Renoir’s subjects are fashionably dressed children and women, mothers attentively taking care of their children, lovers, dancing couples and landscapes. The artist’s highly accessible works, which focus on intimate and joyful moments of everyday life, radiate warmth and optimism — qualities that have made him popular to art lovers to this day. Painters Pierre Matisse (who knew Renoir well) and Pablo Picasso (who tried but failed to meet Renoir at the end of his life) also venerated Renoir and his work, said Bailey.

With the exception of the Impressionist period (from 1865-1875), when Renoir and peers including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro “pioneered the Impressionist method of working directly from nature without preliminary sketches,” according to the Morgan’s press release on the exhibition, Renoir drew extensively, documenting everything from academic studies and impressions of contemporary life, to formal portraits and sketches of friends and family — all on display in the exhibition.

A lifelong love for drawing

Even as a child, Renoir was an ardent graphic artist: He made charcoal drawings on the walls of his family’s apartment, while his primary school teachers reprimanded him for filling his exercise books with drawings of stickmen. As a teenager he apprenticed at a porcelain workshop in Paris — a profession he abandoned around 1859 — and decided to be an artist. In 1860 he gained permission to copy in the Louvre. (For artists and aspiring artists, copying works in major museums was a key part of academic art training, helping them learn about composition, colour, brushwork and anatomy.) Renoir was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the national art school, two years later.

In the 1870’s, Renoir made portraits on commission, many in pastel, to support himself; he also began making drawings to illustrate publications, initially for a novel by the French author and journalist Émile Zola, then for La Vie moderne, an illustrated weekly magazine.

In the summer of 1885, he began drawing and painting his partner, Aline Charigot, a dressmaker who modelled for Renoir before becoming his wife, and later their first son, Pierre. These works marked his return to more traditional artistic practices, such as creating preparatory drawings before executing a painting, and working in a more linear, sharper-edged style than the softer, more improvisational approach of his Impressionist works. He also began to make preliminary drawings for paintings, and adopted the use of red chalk, often in combination with white and black chalks, because it was somewhat softer and more blendable as a medium.

Renoir often drew female nudes — a subject he called “one of art’s indispensable forms” — from the earliest days of his artistic training. According to the Morgan, Renoir used the female nude as a way to explore the representation of form across media.

Bailey is hoping the exhibition will show viewers both Renoir’s creative process and its evolution. “In his own words, he called works on paper his research and his material. The works on paper had a use for him, and by being able to show a few, truly remarkable pictures with those related drawings, you’re going to see that the process is more deliberate, more calculated in a way, it evolves and it’s more of a struggle. We can see there’s more thought and more experimentation behind it,” Bailey said.

For viewers today, Renoir represents “something so joyful and so Parisian,” added Bailey. “He gives you the sense of the delights of being free and young and in love in Paris. Renoir captures that.”

By Jane Levere, CNN