Renoir and the Art of Love and Joy at the Paris exhibition 2026… I felt love and joy, not merely by looking at it … but by being immersed in it …
It is, quite simply, an immersion into joy. The Paris exhibition of Renoir et l’amour: la modernité heureuse (1865–1885) – Renoir and Love: happy modernity – brings love and joy into people’s lives. Opened on 17 March 2026, it continues at the Musée d’Orsay until 19 July. French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) has often been called “the painter of happiness” and here, at this exhibition, that title feels accurate and inevitable. His canvases gather you in, as though you were just another guest at the table, another figure beneath a striped awning, another passerby caught in a luminous afternoon, smiling and laughing with your wonderful companions. Renoir paints the elusive feelings of contentment in motion and laughter mid-conversation. What struck me most was how Renoir paints the feeling of seeing or remembering your first love with such tenderness and gaiety, in an unguarded moment. It’s everywhere: young women lean into the conversation, listening intently; men hover attentive and curious; and faces glow with the possibility of joy, and love too. These are not posed lovers. They are people discovering love. And Paris, in these years, is the backdrop, the accomplice in bringing people together. The exhibition makes something beautifully clear: Renoir did not simply paint people; he painted people in Paris in pure moments of feeling something intense. His figures are never static, and their flesh shimmers with emotion. Oh, my goodness, I felt voyeuristic – momentarily – but then, I felt invited into their conversation, into their world of love and joy. The recognizable paintings are there: Luncheon of the Boating Party, Boating on the Seine, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, Dance at Bougival, Dance in the Country, Dance in the City, The Swing, Two Sisters, Frederic Bazille at his Easel, Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, The Grand Boulevards, The Umbrellas, and more. What makes Renoir’s scenes so unforgettable is how inseparable the people are from their surroundings: tables cluttered with glasses and fruit, striped awnings filtering sunlight into fragments, and leaves dissolving into brushstrokes. The cafés, the gardens, the riverbanks. The half-public, half-private spaces where strangers become companions and afternoons stretch long into the hours and into the memory. I began to see that love, in Renoir, is rarely isolated. It happens among others, with others, even if someone’s eyes are on someone special. Everyone is undeniably beautiful. Not because they are idealized or posed or perfect, but because they are authentic and seen with affection, seen with love and joy: a woman adjusting her hat, a child absorbing the adult world, a man leaning forward as though caught between listening and speaking, another lighting a cigarette after wine and tea. This is not just a visual experience of love and joy. There is always a background murmur, a conversation, a movement, life continuing as it does. Love is not separate from the world; it is woven into it. I began looking not only at the paintings but at the people looking at the paintings, hearing their conversations, leaning in to grasp their feelings, to hang onto a memory. And the colours! Renoir’s palette is perhaps the most radical element of all. They are notharsh. Skin glows and even shadows seem to glow. Blues soften, reds flicker, orange appeals, green is abundant, and all the while, the light circulates around and among and between. Leaving the exhibition, what lingers is not a single painting, but a sensation that love and joy exist most powerfully in the ordinary, when it is seen and heard. Renoir delights in painting people, in painting their joy in being with and among people, and in painting every nuance of their everyday actions. And I too felt his joy and recognized it for exactly the love that it is.
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