Renoir: The Body, The Senses

June 8–September 22, 2019

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Boy with a Cat

1868
Oil on canvas, 48 5/8 x 26 in. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (RF 1992 409) Photo: Patrice Schmidt © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

Over the course of his long career, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) continually turned to the human figure for artistic inspiration. The body—particularly the nude—was the defining subject of Renoir’s artistic practice, from his early days as a student copying the old masters in the Louvre to the early twentieth century, when his revolutionary style of painting inspired the masters of modernism. In recognition of the centenary of Renoir’s death, the Clark Art Institute and the Kimbell Art Museum present Renoir: The Body, The Senses. This daring exhibition is the first major exploration of Renoir’s unceasing interest in the human form, and it reconsiders Renoir as a constantly evolving artist whose style moved from Realism into luminous Impressionism, culminating in the modern classicism of his last decades. 

Renoir: The Body, The Senses includes more than seventy paintings, drawings, pastels, and sculptures by the artist as well as works by his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. An international roster of exceptional loans including Boy with a Cat (1868, Musée d’Orsay); Study: Torso, Effect of Sun (c. 1876, Musée d’Orsay); Seated Bather (c. 1883–1884, Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums); and The Bathers (1918–19, Musée d’Orsay), as well as major contributions from the Clark’s renowned collection of the artist’s work, survey the breadth of Renoir’s career. 

Read the full press release here.