Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum, first got the idea to organize a show focused on Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s drawings in 2018, when the museum received as a gift from a trustee a large red-and-white chalk drawing that was a study for Renoir’s famous painting The Great Bathers (1884–87).
“This, in a way, is the drawing that launched a show,” Bailey told Art in America. The exhibition, which opens on Friday and runs through February 8, 2026, includes all manner of works on paper from throughout the Impressionist master’s career, with more than 100 drawings, watercolors, pastels, and prints. There are even a few paintings, among them The Great Bathers, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Dance in the Country, from the Musée d’Orsay; and Gabrielle and Jean, from the Orangerie.
Below, Bailey elaborates on the meaning and importance behind 10 selected drawings from the show, some standalone artworks and others related to Renoir’s most recognizable Impressionist paintings. After its stop at the Morgan, “Renoir Drawings” will travel to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in March of next year.
