Following a wrong-footing opening gallery, in which Renoir, in his pre-Impressionist days, is presented as a painter of sober greys, the show is built around a spectacular loan, never before seen in Britain. Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876), from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, is a stone-cold Impressionist classic. It depicts a high-spirited gathering of bright young things enjoying an outdoor dance in Montmartre as if they were exotic sea creatures in an indigo lagoon.
Here, it appears in a knockout room surrounded by romantic images of flirtatious young men and women in sun-dappled settings reminiscent of 18th-century French art. Paintings in later galleries of dandyish urbanites on Paris’s streets as well as in its theatres amplify the sense of passion and the overarching themes of intimacy and sociability in this artist’s work.
The exhibition casts Renoir, who came from a working-class family, as an unreconstructed sensualist striving to capture “gaiety”. He was brilliant at evoking a feeling of replete wellbeing. See how he paints a young buck keenly igniting a cigarette after a decent meal. I gave up smoking years ago but, instantly, Renoir’s image made me want to light up.