This winter and spring The Frick Collection presents an exhibition of nine iconic
Impressionist paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, offering the first
comprehensive study of the artist’s engagement with the full-length format. Its
use was associated with the official Paris Salon from the mid-1870s to mid-
1880s, the decade that saw the emergence of a fully fledged Impressionist
aesthetic. The project was inspired by Renoir’s La Promenade of 1875–76, the
most significant Impressionist work in the Frick’s permanent collection.
Intended for public display, the vertical grand-scale canvases in the exhibition
are among the artist’s most daring and ambitious presentations of contemporary
subjects and are today considered masterpieces of Impressionism. The show and
accompanying catalogue draw on contemporary criticism, literature, and archival
documents to explore the motivation behind Renoir’s full-length figure paintings
as well as their reception by critics, peers, and the public. Recently-undertaken
technical studies of the canvases will also shed new light on the artist’s working
methods. Works on loan from international institutions are La Parisienne from
the National Museum Wales, Cardiff; The Umbrellas (Les Parapluies) fromThe
National Gallery, London (first time since 1886 on view in the United States);
and Dance in the City and Dance in the Country from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Paintings coming from American
institutions are The Dancerfrom the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Madame Henriot “en travesti” (The Page)from the Columbus Museum of Art; Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina
Wartenberg) from The Art Institute of Chicago; and Dance at Bougival from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.