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Renoir presents his pert subject dressed from head to foot in an outdoor morning toilette of striking blue silk, with matching toque and choker, appropriate for the spring. This Parisienne's walking dress consists of a jacket worn over a double-layer skirt, with the overskirt pulled into a bustle in the back and the underskirt trimmed at the front with two pleated flounces. Initially, Renoir may have intended to present his model in a more defined setting, since he appears to have laid in background elements such as a doorway or column at left. Although this is not a portrait, we know that Renoir used the services of his favorite model at the time, Marie-Henriette Grossin, a seventeen-year-old actress who would later assume the stage name Madame Henriot. She posed for two other pictures in this exhibition: Madame Henriot "en travesti'' (The Page) and La Promenade.

A young woman shepherds a pair of identically dressed little sisters along the path of a well-maintained public park. All three figures are outfitted for the cold and in the height of fashion. The eldest wears a blue velvet jacket with wide sleeves trimmed with red fox; the little girls wear miniature blue-green jackets trimmed with either swansdown or white mink. Further up the pathway to the right, Renoir has included no fewer than eleven additional figures and two playful dogs. La Promenade was the centerpiece of the artist's submission to the Second Impressionist Exhibition in the spring of 1876. To his dismay, most critics ignored this ambitious figure painting and those who commented on it did so unfavorably.

A young couple waltz alone on an immaculate parquet floor in a marble salon, with palms and indoor plants behind them. The woman, her hair in a chignon adorned with a single pink rose, is wearing a "toilette de bal" of white satin or silk taffeta, with organza, lace, or chiffon trimming around the neck and shoulders of the bodice. Her neck and back are most likely powdered, and she wears elbow-length white gloves of satin or leather, an essential accouterment for her sleeveless ball gown. Here Renoir used two of his friends as models. The demure, well-bred young woman was posed for by the eighteen-year-old artist and habituée of Montmartre, Suzanne Valadon. Her partner was modeled for by the twenty-three-year-old journalist Paul Lhote, a man about town whose handsome features Renoir faithfully recorded.

Related: Dance in the Country and Dance at Bougival

Probably the last of these three Dance pictures to be completed, Dance at Bougival is the most romantic of the trilogy. Eyes masked by his boatman's straw hat, the male partner expresses his intentions through body language that is as legible today as it would have been a century and a quarter ago. His female companion's willing compliance completes the harmony, both visual and sensual, that is at the heart of this painting. The touching of ungloved hands and the proximity of the dancers' faces would have appeared audacious to a late nineteenth-century audience. Like the companion Dance pictures, Dance at Bougival achieves the luminosity of Renoir's Impressionist work while maintaining the solidity of modeling that characterized his most recent portraits and figure paintings. The participants are shown enjoying a Sunday afternoon ball at Bougival, a village ten miles west of Paris with a somewhat dubious reputation.

Related: Dance in the City and Dance in the Country