"I am beginning to learn how to paint. It has taken me over fifty years to get to this result, but there's still a long way to go", said the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) in 1913 when a major exhibition of his work was staged at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, including some large-format nudes painted in the early years of the twentieth century. The show was a revelation.
This year's exhibition has been designed in a twofold perspective: to shed new light on a period and little-known aspects of Renoir's work (notably his decorative paintings, drawings and sculptures), while reaffirming the influence of his art throughout the first half of the 20th century in France. Some one hundred Renoir paintings, drawings and sculptures have been gathered together and will be shown in fifteen sections where they will be set against works by Picasso, Matisse, Maillol and Bonnard, giving an indication of the artist's influence and legacy. The exhibition will thus be an invitation to look again at Renoir's late works through the eyes of artists who, in the first half of the 20th century, were the contemporary of a master who had plied much of his trade in the 19th.
The exhibition is organised by the Réunion des musées nationaux, the Musée d'Orsay and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It will be on show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from February 14 to May 9 2010 then at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from June 13 to September 15 2010.

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