Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la galette), 1876
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Musée d'Orsay
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will be the only U.S. venue for “Renoir and Love,” opening February 28, 2027—a once-in-a-generation exhibition co-organized with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery in London, and billed as the first show devoted specifically to the theme of love in Renoir’s work. It is also the museum’s first major Pierre-Auguste Renoir exhibition in more than four decades. The show will bring together 40 paintings from collections around the world and will be on view through June 13, 2027.
“Renoir and Love” centers on the two decades between the mid-1860s and mid-1880s, a period the museum considers the height of Renoir’s output, when the artist turned repeatedly to themes of friendship, family, and flirtation rather than the moralizing or anecdotal subjects favored by some of his Impressionist peers. The exhibition argues that Renoir’s scenes of gardens, cafés, and theaters were among his greatest masterpieces. .
Highlights include Dance at Moulin de la Galette (1876), on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, shown alongside its companion painting, Dance in the Country (1883), also from the d’Orsay, and the MFA’s own Dance at Bougival (1883). Also on view are At Renoir’s Home (1876), which depicts the sociability of the artist’s studio, and Madame Monet and Her Son (1874), which points to Renoir’s friendship with fellow Impressionist Claude Monet.
The show also arrives amid renewed market interest in works by Renoir. In November 2025, a previously unseen 1890s Renoir depicting the artist’s son and his nanny, Gabrielle Renard, sold for $2 million at Drouot in Paris after being out of public view for a century. This May, Bonhams auctioned 21 additional paintings from Renard’s personal collection, many never before exhibited. Renoir’s auction record remains $78.1 million, set by Dance at Le moulin de la Galette at Sotheby’s New York in 1990.
The exhibition arrives in a city with a complicated history with the artist, however. In 2015, protesters calling themselves Renoir Sucks at Painting picketed outside the MFA Boston, arguing the museum should remove his work from view..
This exhibition hopes to reframe the Impressionist’s work for a new generation, focusing on Renoir’s unique emotional connection to themes of modern love and friendship.
