Bal du moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Bal du moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Sunlight through the leaves

The Moulin de la Galette was an open-air dance hall near the top of Montmartre, beside one of the hill’s old windmills, where people from the district came to dance. Renoir shows it at full crowd: couples turning on the left, young women and men talking round a table on the right, glasses and a carafe in front of them, and behind them a sea of hats. Gas lamps hang like white globes among the trees. What everyone notices first is the light, falling through the leaves in pale blue and white patches over jackets, dresses and the ground.

Friends in the crowd

The canvas is large, and Renoir worked on it partly on the spot. Many of the figures are his friends, and one of them, the writer Georges Rivière, later named several of the sitters. The painting was shown at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. It then belonged to the painter and collector Gustave Caillebotte, and after his death in 1894 it passed to the French state. A smaller version is in a private collection.

Where it hangs

The painting is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and measures 131 by 175 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 9,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 60 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée d’Orsay, Paris · Wikidata Q683274 · Wikimedia Commons