Bal du Moulin de la Galette
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, 1876. OIL ON CANVAS.
The totality of a single moment, frozen in time, is captured on canvas. Each Sunday, working class Parisians would gather at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, dress up in their finest clothes and dance, drink, and eat late into the evenings. Renoir’s depiction of this ritual came not from his mind nor his memory but rather from intense observation of the scene. Each figure depicted is representative of someone Renoir knew, each relationship painted is storied, complicated and real, and for many of the figures, they themselves modelled for Renoir, adopting the poses they had thrown organically weekends before. This painting is considered, rightly so, one of the masterpieces of Impressionism. It contains all of the technical trademarks, from fluid depictions of movement, richness of form and sun-dappled lighting. Yet, more than this, it captures so perfectly, so precisely and so poetically, a snapshot, an impression that lives in the mind as well as the canvas.