Collection: Renoir and Love: Happy Modernity (1865-1885)

Musée d'Orsay

March 17 to July 19, 2026

Auguste Renoir's colorful and joyful paintings, his iconography of open-air cafes and public dances, have earned him the title of "painter of happiness." This reputation has sometimes led to his marginalization among the great painters of modernity, on the grounds that modernity can only be melancholic or ironic, disillusioned or disenchanted. Yet his work offers an original reflection on modernity, placed under the sign of love, understood both as a force governing human relationships and as a feeling guiding the artist's gaze upon his models, the world, and painting itself.