Art Eyewitness Review: Renoir Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum

 

  Renoir Drawings

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City

October 12, 2025- February 8, 2026  

Musee d'Orsay, Paris / March 17-July 5, 2026 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

December 31, 1917, the old year passed, marking the end of one of the worst years in modern history. 1918 would be even more terrible. The final year of World War I and the outbreak of the Influenza Pandemic would sweep away the decaying European empires and consume millions of lives.

In the seaside town of Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France, a semblance of civility remained. There Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, lived and worked. That day, Renoir welcomed a younger artist to his home, a revolutionary whose paintings had little in common with Renoir's: Henri Matisse.

Renoir and Matisse quickly warmed to each other. Despite the radical difference in their painting styles, they did have one great, shared passion: a devotion to drawing.

Matisse, of course, is one of the supreme draftsmen in art history. But Renoir?

          

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of the Renoir Drawings exhibition

 at the Morgan Library & Museum

A masterful exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, now in its final weeks before traveling to the Musee d’Orsay, has launched a major reappraisal of Renoir. An artist famous for his Impressionist paintings and notorious for his late-life nudes, the Renoir of the Morgan exhibit is a master of pencil and pen, chalk and pastel.

Amazingly, the Morgan exhibition is the first major survey of Renoir drawings since 1921. That bygone exhibit, mounted by the Durand Ruel Gallery, occurred a mere three years after Renoir's death. Since then, when critical attention focused on Renoir's works on paper, these were chiefly studied as preliminary steps in the creation of his oil paintings.

Renoir Drawings consists of much more than preparatory sketches for major paintings - although the keystone of the exhibition is indeed such a work. Over one hundred drawings, pastels, watercolors and colored lithographs are displayed. Several oil paintings are also on view, as is a 1915 film clip of the aged, crippled Renoir at work. 

A film/video clip of Renoir at work in 1915, shown in the lobby of

 the Renoir Drawings exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum

To grasp the importance of drawing for Renoir, a good place to start is the portrait of Julie Manet (1878-1966). She was the daughter of Renoir's close friend and fellow Impressionist, Berthe Morisot, who commissioned the work.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Child with a Cat or Julie Manet, 1887

Painted in 1887, the portrait of Julie Manet has many - but not all - of the hallmarks of Impressionist technique. Background details are applied to represent the setting without distracting the eye with a roomful of precisely rendered furnishings. Fluid brushstrokes evoke the girl's dress, giving a sense of the flowing gown which clothes her body.

Fundamental attention is devoted to Julie's face, composed with the soulful, almost pleading, look of a child trying not to squirm like the cat she holds. This facial composition marks a departure from earlier Renoir portraits. Here, as the Morgan curators note, "The strong, sharply defined contours of her face in both the sketch and the painting exemplify Renoir’s new emphasis on line and clarity in his work."

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Renoir‘s Study for "Child with a Cat" or Julie Manet, ca. 1887

The preparatory drawing, one of five executed by Renoir, presents Julie in a more frontally-aligned pose than the finished portrait. Most of the details of dress, hand and cat are roughly sketched. But the new "sharply defined" features of Julie's face (of which Morisot highly approved) are very much present.

When closely examined, Renoir's drawings confirm that they were foundational to his art. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of the Renoir Drawings exhibition,

 showing student work by Renoir, dating to the 1860's.

Like most aspiring artists in 19th century France, the young Renoir honed his skill by copying plaster casts of classical statues. The Morgan exhibition displays a number of these student efforts. Rather unremarkable in themselves, these academic drawings show that Renoir was well-grounded in the basics.

Renoir had little need to resort to his academic training during from the crucial Impressionist years of the 1870's and early 80's. Painting landscapes en plein air was the primary focus of Renoir's work during those years and did not call for preliminary drawings. 

When sales of his Impressionist landscapes lagged, Renoir resorted to portrait painting. Drawing, in consequence, assumed greater importance in his oeuvre.

Renoir's return to drawing, however, was much more than a matter of cash flow. According to Colin Bailey, the director of the Morgan and lead curator of this splendid exhibition, Renoir confronted a "moment of truth" in his artistic career. Bailey writes:

It was Renoir’s so-called “crisis of Impressionism” of the mid-1880s and his paintings of "Motherhood and "The Great Bathers" that led him to reevaluate the role of drawing and its various functions and formats. From then on, drawings in all techniques—as well as reproductive media, from etching and drypoint to color lithography — would remain an integral part of Renoir’s output. 

Among the "various functions and formats"  in Renoir's drawing repertoire was one which, ironically, he found disagreeable to use. Yet, he became one of the great modern masters of this medium: pastel.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Boating Couple, 1880–1881

Pastel art had been highly-regarded during the 18th century. As a young boy, Renoir had been trained as an apprentice painter of the celebrated Limoges porcelain ware. He became especially proficient decorating cups with images of Marie Antoinette. It was the beginning of Renoir's life-long love affair of the 18th century which likely influenced his use of pastels.

In a practical sense, as well, pastels had much to offer Renoir. These drawings (some called them paintings) shared in the immediacy and appeal of Impressionist paintings. And they could be executed quickly. This was no small matter, as many of Renoir's commissions were for portraits of young children and adolescents.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of the Renoir Drawings exhibition,

 showing a selection of pastel portraits by Renoir

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Renoir's portrait of Madeleine Adam at Fourteen, 1887

If using pastels facilitated capturing the features of restive children and moody teenagers, the same was true for reclusive, temperamental painters from Aix-en-Provence! 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

 Renoir's Paul Cezanne, 1880

The pastel portrait of Paul Cezanne, dating to 1880, is one of the standout works of Renoir Drawings.This perceptive and empathetic likeness of Cezanne also calls to mind the 2021 MOMA survey of Cezanne's drawings. The Morgan and MOMA exhibitions complement each other brilliantly in the way that they underscore the importance of drawing for two Impressionist masters more famous for their paintings.

The drawings by Renoir and Cezanne share two salient features. 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Seated Nude Seen from the Back, 1885–87

Firstly, there is not one sketch or study in the Renoir exhibit which can be labeled as hasty or "slapdash." The same was true for the 2021 MOMA display of Cezanne's drawings. 

Whether intended as preparation for a painting-in-progress or a unique, highly-finished work like Renoir's beautiful nude, executed with red chalk (above), a drawing by either of these artists is a "masterclass" in creative expression.

The attention and skill which Renoir devoted to his works on paper is apparent by contrasting a pastel and a drawing in red chalk, on view in the Morgan exhibition, with an oil painting from the collection of the Philadelphia Art Museum. 

                                  

Portrait of Mademoiselle Legrand, which Renoir painted in 1875, does not appear in the Morgan exhibition. Yet, it is so close in subject and spirit to the pastel portrait of Elizabeth Maitre (1879) and Head of a Young Girl (ca. 1900) that it makes for perfect comparison with Renoir's drawings. Viewing these three works by Renoir, it is clear that each is a masterpiece in its own, unique artistic medium.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

 Renoir's Head of a Young Girl, ca. 1900

 

At the bottom of the red chalk portrait, two small-scale preliminary sketches can be seen. Renoir frequently included multiple images in a drawing. Some times these were subsidiary to the main subject being depicted; on other occasions, a number of unrelated subjects were depicted on a single sheet of paper. In doing so, Renoir followed in the artistic footsteps of Rembrandt and Watteau, a practice which Cezanne did as well.

I find such sketch sheets with their multiple images to be immensely appealing. These are akin to photo "snapshots" which document the creative process and provide insight into the artist's mind as vision is translated into imagery. As an added bonus, drawings like Study for "Dance in the Country" are a joy to behold, as compelling - or almost so - as the finished painting.

.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Study for "Dance in the Country", 1883

The free-wheeling spontaneity which characterizes Study for "Dance in the Country" was notably absent from Renoir's arduous and exacting effort to paint a masterpiece in the grand tradition of classic French art: The Great Bathers. 

Between 1885 to 1887, Renoir methodically executed twenty drawings in preparation for a major painting which he stated "shall knock Raphael off his pedestal." This boast was characteristic of Renoir's  risk-taking approach to art. But he almost had to eat his words. A first attempt at painting The Great Bathers failed and had to be abandoned.

Renoir put down his brushes, grasped sticks of red and black chalk and started drawing. 

Drawing and redrawing and drawing again ... until The Bathers, the frolicking young women whom art critic Louis Vauxcelles called Renoir's Venuses, came to life and were ready to be painted.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of the Renoir Drawings exhibit, showing

  draft compositions for The Great Bathers, ca. 1885-1886

In 2018, a generous benefactor gave one of these impressive drawings to the Morgan Library's collection. On display with six (out of twenty) of Renoir's other "prep" drawings, the Morgan's Study for The Great Bathers is the foundational work of the entire exhibition.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

 Renoir's oil-on-canvas, The Great Bathers, ca. 1886–87

Such high praise might seem excessive, given that The Great Bathers, on loan from the Philadelphia Art Museum, is also on view. But the more that you compare the preparatory drawing with the finished painting, one realizes that the genius of Renoir was realized as much by the creative process of The Great Bathers as in the completed oil-on-canvas.

Renoir did not, in fact, dethrone Raphael from his pedestal with The Great Bathers. But he did create a body of drawings which could favorably stand comparison with the work of Jean Auguste Ingres. For a French artist of the 19th century, there could be no greater praise.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Study for "The Great Bathers", ca. 1886-1887

It must be acknowledged that the drawings of nude women for The Great Bathers set Renoir on the course of painting the many nudes of his late career. Speaking on the subject, while working on The Great Bathers, Renoir explained to Berthe Morisot that the nude was "one of the essential forms of art."

What now may seem obsessive was certainly not viewed as such during Renoir's lifetime. Leading cultural figures like the poet Stéphane Mallarmé praised Renoir's nudes as expressions of the vitality of life. Artists of the succeeding generation, Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse were convinced believers in Renoir's genius. Picasso later purchased a Renoir nude, Bather Seated in a Landscape, now in the collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris.

It is important to emphasize that the aged Renoir, wracked with pain, was fixated on the beauty of life. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of Renoir Drawings, showing a sketch in black chalk of Gabrielle and Jean, ca. 1895, and the finished painting, 1895-96

In his later years, Renoir drew and painted his family as they experienced the joys of life, as well as plump, handsome young women, exuding beauty. 

"The pain passes", Renoir exclaimed to Matisse, during one of their moments of comradeship in the dark days of the Great War, "but the beauty remains."

Detail of Renoir's Gabrielle and Jean, 1895-1896.

At the Morgan Library exhibition, soon to head to the Musee d’Orsay, Renoir's vision of beauty still lives.

***

Text and original photos: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Introductory Image: Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Market Women with a Basket, ca.1888. Red and black chalk on paper:Sheet: 16 5/8 × 12 3/8 in. (42.3 × 31.5 cm) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir Drawing at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir Drawing at the Morgan Library and Museum, showing a film/video of Renoir in 1915.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Child with a Cat or Julie Manet, 1887. Oil on canvas: 25 13/16 × 21 1/16 in. (65.5 × 53.5 cm) Musée d'Orsay

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Renoir‘s Study for "Child with a Cat" or Julie Manet, ca. 1887. Charcoal and pencil on blue paper:Sheet: 24 7/16 × 18 1/2 in. (62 × 47 cm). Private collection.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir's drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum, showing student work by Renoi, dating to the 1860's.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Boating Couple, 1880–1881. Pastel on paper.Sheet: 17 3/4 × 23 in. (45.1 × 58.4 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir Drawing at the Morgan Library and Museum, showing pastels by Renoir.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Renoir's portrait of Madeleine Adam at Fourteen, 1887. Pastel and graphite on paper: Sheet: 23 5/8 × 18 7/8 in. (60 × 48 cm) Collection of Diane B. Wilsey

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Renoir's Paul Cezanne, 1880. Pastel on paper: Sheet: 20 3/4 × 16 3/4 in. (52.7 × 42.5 cm) Private collection.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Seated Nude Seen from the Back, ca. 1885–87. Red and white chalk on paper mounted to board: 15 1/4 × 11 7/8 in. (38.7 × 30.2 cm) Collection of George Condo. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Three Renoir portraits, from left, Portrait of a Young Girl (Elisabeth Maître), 1879, pastel on paper, The Albertina Museum, Vienna; Head of a Young Girl, ca. 1900, Red chalk on paper: Sheet: 18 5/16 × 12 5/16 in. (46.5 × 31.3 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art; Portrait of Mademoiselle Legrand, 1875, Oil on canvas, 32 x 23 1/2 inches (81.3 x 59.7 cm.) Philadelphia Art Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Renoir's Head of a Young Girl, ca. 1900. (See citation above).

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Study for "Dance in the Country",1883. Brush and brown, blue, and black wash over black chalk or graphite on paper: sheet: 19 1/2 × 12 in. (49.5 × 30.5 cm) Yale University Art Gallery.

 Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir Drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum, showing draft compositions for The Great Bathers,ca. 1885-1886.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Renoir's The Great Bathers, ca. 1886 – 87. Oil on canvas: 46 3/8 × 67 1/4 in. (117.8 × 170.8 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Study for "The Great Bathers", ca. 1886-1887 and 1908. Red and white chalk, with smudging and blending on wove paper, lined to canvas. Sheet: 43 1/2 × 57 in. (110.49 × 144.78 cm) Bequest of Drue Heinz, Morgan Library and Museum.

 Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Renoir Drawing at the Morgan Library showing (from left) Renoir's Gabrielle and Jean, ca. 1895. Black chalk on paper: sheet: 24 7/16 × 18 9/16 in. (62 × 47.2 cm) National Gallery of Canada and Renoir's Gabrielle and Jean, 1895-96. Oil on canvas: 25 9/16 × 21 1/4 in. (65 × 54 cm) Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) detail of Renoir's painting, Gabrielle and Jean (see above).