Move over, water lilies—this fall it’s Renoir’s sketchbook that’s stepping into the spotlight. The Morgan Library & Museum is about to do something no New York institution has attempted in more than a century: dedicate an entire exhibition to Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s works on paper.
“Renoir’s drawings reveal an artist of tremendous sensitivity and range,” said Colin B. Bailey, the Morgan’s director and curator of the show. And he’s not exaggerating. Opening October 17, Renoir Drawings will bring together more than 100 works—pastels, watercolors, prints and even a plaster sculpture—offering a rare chance to see the Impressionist master beyond his sun-dappled oils.
The last time anyone staged a show like this was in Paris in 1921, which makes the Morgan’s exhibition a bona fide art-world event. The presentation is organized with the Musée d’Orsay, where it will travel next summer, and it spans the artist’s full career. Expect everything from the academic figure studies of his student years to quick on-the-spot impressions of city life, intimate sketches of his wife and children and preparatory studies for some of his most ambitious canvases.
One highlight: the Morgan’s own large-scale sketch for The Great Bathers (1886–87), acquired in 2018, which will be shown alongside the finished painting, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, plus seven other related drawings. Another crowd-pleaser, Dance in the Country (1883), gets the same treatment with its own suite of preparatory works. Together, these pairings reveal Renoir’s habit of circling a subject from every angle before committing brush to canvas.
The exhibition also dips into Renoir’s illustrations for Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir and the periodical La Vie moderne, underscoring how the artist adapted his hand to the printed page. And in a poignant coda, visitors will encounter The Judgment of Paris (1914), a plaster sculpture made in collaboration with Richard Guino, created after arthritis had robbed Renoir of the use of his hands.
To round things out, the Morgan is programming concerts, talks, and even a watercolor workshop—because if Renoir could churn out sketches between arthritis flare-ups, surely you can manage a few brushstrokes.
Renoir Drawings runs October 17, 2025, through February 8, 2026, at the Morgan Library & Museum.