Renoir and Love

Renoir and Love is on at The National Gallery in the Sainsbury Wing from 3 October 2026 to 31 January 2027. It's the most significant showing of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's work in the UK for twenty years, and the first artist-focused exhibition the Gallery has put on since 2007. The show is organised with the Musée d'Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as part of a touring exhibition.

The paintings focus on Renoir's crucial years from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when more than a third of the canvases he painted were scenes of modern love and social interaction set in Paris's new public spaces. Among them is Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876), on loan from the Musée d'Orsay and on display in the UK for the first time. The rest of the show draws from museums worldwide, including the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the Städel Museum, the Nationalmuseum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Norton Simon Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Co-curator Christopher Riopelle says that more than any of his contemporaries, Renoir chronicled love and friendship as keys to modern life. The exhibition traces affection, seduction, male camaraderie and the sociability of the café and theatre before his move towards more solid, sculptural compositions. It was co-curated by Riopelle and Chiara Di Stefano at the National Gallery, with Paul Perrin of the Musée d'Orsay.

Standard admission is £20 off-peak, Sunday to Thursday, and £25 on Friday and Saturday, and all days in the first two weeks; under 18s and Members go free. From 23 October 2026 to 15 January 2027, there's Pay What You Wish each Friday evening, as little as £1.