'Le Moulin de la Galette'

PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR

1876
oil on canvas, 131- 175 cm. - Paris, Musée d'Orsay

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This masterwork has been described as “the most beautiful painting of the 19th century”. The painting depicts one of the numerous dances that took place in the Moulin de la Galette, one of the most frequented restaurants and leisure clubs in 19th century Montmartre, a paradise for bohemians and artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh or Renoir himself.

This work is a masterpiece in which Renoir portrays many of his friends – as Cuban painter Pedro Vidal and his partner, other French painters like Lamy, Gervex or Codey- spending a placid Sunday afternoon in the Moulin's garden. But not all of the figures in the painting are famous names: Renoir himself affirmed that several of the female models were prostitutes: “I was afraid some men might prohibit their “ladies” the from posing in my study, but they were also good guys. Some of them even became my male models”. Artists, bohemians, prostitutes… all of them forming an authentic “human zoo” that take us back to those bohemian afternoons from 19th century Paris.

Text: G. Fernández, www.theartwolf.com

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