Painting large as an Impressionist: Renoir and the full-length format
About the event
Join Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of The Morgan Library & Museum, for an illuminating exploration of Renoir’s full-length portraits, among the most ambitious and compelling works of his career. This special lecture is presented on the occasion of our exhibition Renoir and Love , which examines how Renoir captured the emotions, relationships, and social interactions that defined modern life in 19th-century Paris. While celebrated for his Impressionist scenes of leisure and sociability, Renoir was also a master of figurative painting. In his large-scale portraits and full-length compositions, he transformed friends, patrons, and fashionable sitters into vivid embodiments of modern elegance, intimacy, and desire. Bailey will consider how these works reveal Renoir’s artistic ambitions, his evolving approach to portraiture, and his fascination with the human presence. Drawing on decades of research into Renoir’s life and work, Bailey brings fresh insight into paintings that combine technical brilliance with psychological immediacy. This lecture offers a unique opportunity to look closely at some of the artist’s most celebrated figures and to understand their place within the broader themes of love, friendship, and modernity explored throughout the exhibition.
