Le Moulin de la Galette
Information about painting
| Dimensions: | 175 x 131 cm | |
| Type: | Oil on canvas | |
| Location: | Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France | |
| Shop: | Buy oil on canvas handmade reproduction | |
The Moulin de la Galette was one of 21 works shown by Renoir at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Every Sunday afternoon young people from the north of Paris contributed in the dance-hall and in the courtyard behind it in fine weather. Most of the figures in Renoir's work, rather than being habitués of the Moulin were in fact portraits of his friends, with the occasional professional model posing for thin. The scene which Renoir has painted in this work is not an authentic representation of the clientele of the Moulin, but rather a scrupulously organized series of portrait.
The writer Georges Rivière, who knew Renoir well at this time, and is himself included in the painting as one of the three foreground gallant drinking at the table, in his review of the work in the journal L'Iimpressionniste which accompanied exhibition referred to it as a page of history, a precious and strictly accurate portrayal of Parisian life. That he should have stressed its realism is odd given the interpretation he attached to The Swing and knowing the very painstaking working method Renoir had adopted.
fernand hazan edituer-drots de reprdution reserves-printed in france. also 395 renoir
picture available