Renoir and Love: Painting, Pleasure and Modern Life in Impressionist Paris

This autumn, the National Gallery in London will host Renoir and Love, the most significant exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s work in the UK for twenty years. This blockbuster exhibition brings together paintings from collections around the world and will explore Renoir’s images of love, friendship and human connection, including his celebrated Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, displayed in the UK for the first time.

This course offers a focused and richly engaging introduction to Renoir as both a leading Impressionist and a painter of modern life. Led by Dr Michael Paraskos, the course invites you to look closely at Renoir’s use of colour, light and brushwork, while also asking deeper questions: How did he represent love and intimacy? What can his paintings tell us about social life in nineteenth-century Paris? And why have his images of pleasure and human companionship remained so popular?

Working painting by painting, we will explore how Renoir constructed scenes of courtship, friendship and family life through gesture, exchanged glances and physical proximity; his depictions of cafés, theatres, dance halls and suburban leisure; and the relationship between his apparently spontaneous scenes and the rapidly changing society in which they were created. We will also consider Renoir in his wider artistic and cultural context, including his place within Impressionism, his debt to eighteenth-century French art, and his changing approach to painting during the 1880s.

Throughout the session, the emphasis will be on looking carefully, thinking critically and developing confidence in interpreting works of art. By the end of the course, you will have a deeper understanding of Renoir not simply as a painter of attractive and pleasurable scenes, but as an ambitious and innovative artist who made love, friendship and social interaction central subjects of modern art.

This course is ideal for anyone with an interest in art history, Impressionism, nineteenth-century Paris or the relationship between art and modern life.

No prior knowledge of art or art history is required.

For course content enquiries: Contact the Programme Manager, Dr Michael Paraskos, at m.paraskos@imperial.ac.uk

For enrolment and booking enquiries: Contact Christian Jacobi at c.jacobi@imperial.ac.uk

Class recordings

These classes are not recorded.

Imperial certificates

This course has no exams or assessments, so you can focus on enjoying your learning. Regular attendance may also lead to the award of an Imperial attendance certificate. (T&Cs apply).