Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette

Sunlight falls through the leaves in coins of gold onto dancers, straw hats and glasses of wine. Renoir did not paint a grand event, just an ordinary Sunday afternoon in Montmartre, and made it feel like happiness itself.

The story behind the painting

In the late nineteenth century, working-class Parisians would dress up on Sundays and climb to the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre to dance, drink and eat galettes into the evening. In May 1876 Pierre-Auguste Renoir decided to paint this scene. His friend Georges Rivière, a civil servant, described the whole project in his memoir Renoir et ses amis. Renoir found a studio nearby, an abandoned cottage on the rue Cortot with a garden Rivière called a beautiful abandoned park; that place is preserved today as the Musée de Montmartre. Rivière recalled the painting being done on the spot, not without difficulty, as the wind kept threatening to carry the canvas away. Renoir peopled the crowd with friends and with young women who came to the dance hall every Sunday.

What to look for

Let your eye wander, as if you had just arrived. In the foreground a group gathers around a table; a girl in a blue and pink striped dress leans toward her companions. Behind them the dance floor swirls with couples, and in the middle distance a man in striped trousers dances with a young woman. Above, globe lamps hang among the trees. Now notice the light: it does not fall evenly but flickers across jackets, faces and the ground in patches, as sunlight does through leaves. This sun-dappled effect, together with Renoir's fluid brushwork and rich forms, is what makes the scene breathe. Look, too, at the straw bonnet with a wide red ribbon at the upper right, a fashionable hat called a timbale that Renoir liked to pass around among his models.

Meaning and intent

The painting is a typically Impressionist snapshot of real life, from Renoir's early maturity. Its subject is not history or myth but leisure: ordinary people enjoying a free afternoon. Rivière identified many of the figures. The girl in the striped dress is Estelle Samary, sister of Renoir's favourite model Jeanne; near her sit the painters Pierre-Franc Lamy and Norbert Goeneutte and Rivière himself. Among the dancers are Henri Gervex and others, and at the centre the Cuban painter Pedro Vidal de Solares dances with a model called Margot. Knowing these names turns the crowd into a circle of real friends. There is tenderness behind the joy too: Margot died of typhoid just two years later, with Renoir nursing her and paying for her care. The painting preserves a fleeting moment of shared happiness.

Legacy

From 1879 to 1894 the painting belonged to the painter Gustave Caillebotte, a friend and supporter of the Impressionists. When he died it passed to the French state, hung in the Musée du Luxembourg from 1896, moved to the Louvre in 1929, and since 1986 has been at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It is counted among the most celebrated masterpieces of Impressionism. Renoir also painted a smaller, more fluid version of the same scene, which is believed to be in a private collection in Switzerland; it is not known which of the two came first. Whichever it was, the d'Orsay picture remains the one most visitors know, and it still does what Renoir intended: it lets us step into the sunlight and join the dance.

Did you know?

Renoir painted the scene outdoors, and the wind kept threatening to blow the canvas away.
The garden of Renoir's studio on the rue Cortot is now the Musée de Montmartre.
Many figures are Renoir's friends, identified by Georges Rivière, who also appears in the picture.
A smaller version exists, and no one knows for certain which of the two is the original.

Wikipedia · Wikidata