October 30, 2025

Renoir Drawings, October 17, 2025 – February 8, 2026 at The Morgan Library and Museum

“The Morgan Library & Museum presents Renoir Drawings, the first comprehensive exhibition in more than a century devoted to the works on paper of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). On view from October 17, 2025, through February 8, 2026, the exhibition explores Renoir’s engagement with draftsmanship across his long and influential career. Organized with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Renoir Drawings brings together over one hundred drawings, pastels, watercolors, prints, and paintings, inviting visitors to engage with Renoir’s creative process while offering insights into his artistic methods across five decades.

While Renoir’s paintings have become icons of Impressionism, his drawings are less well-known. Yet beginning in his earliest days as an artist-in-training and continuing until his very last years, Renoir regularly drew and painted on paper in a variety of media. The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to his drawings since Aquarelles, pastels et dessins par Renoir in 1921 at the Galeries Durand-Ruel, in Paris, Renoir Drawings assembles outstanding examples of all the media on paper in which Renoir worked, from pencil, pen and ink, chalk, pastel, and watercolor to etching and lithography. ” — The Morgan Library & Museum 

The Great Bathers, 1886–87. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr. Collection, 1963, 1963-116-13
View of a Park, ca. 1885–90. Watercolor with white opaque watercolor on paper. Thaw Collection, The
Morgan Library & Museum. Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2017.
Child with an Apple or Gabrielle, Jean, and a Young Girl with an Apple, ca. 1895. Pastel. Collection of Leone Cettolin Dauberville. Photo © Jean-Louis Losi, Paris
Seated Woman Leaning on Her Elbow, ca. 1915–17. Black chalk. The Albertina Museum, Vienna; inv. 24330. Image: The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna.
Study for “The Judgment of Paris,” ca. 1908. Black, red, and white chalk. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC;. 1636, Acquired 1940.
Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) and Richard Guino. (1890–1973). The Judgment of Paris, 1914. Patinated plaster. Musée d’Orsay, Paris; RF 2745. Musée d’Orsay, dist. GrandPalaisRmn.. Photography by René-Gabriel Ojéda

“Renoir’s drawings reveal an artist of tremendous sensitivity and range,” said Colin B. Bailey, curator of the exhibition and Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “This exhibition brings together rarely seen works on paper to provide a more complete view of Renoir’s creative process, offering visitors a fresh perspective on one of the most well-known and influential painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Renoir Drawings, the first exhibition at the Morgan to be curated by Dr. Bailey, coincides with his tenth anniversary as its director. He is a noted specialist in eighteenth-century French art and a recognized authority on Renoir. 

Organized by Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director, and Sarah Lees, Research Associate to the Director. 

Titlle image: Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919). Portrait of a Girl (Elisabeth Maître), 1879. Pastel on Ingres paper. The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna – The Batliner Collection | Image: The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna.

Images courtesy The Morgan Morgan Library & Museum.