Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Dance at Bougival

Dance at Bougival: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Dance at Bougival is a thoroughly contemporary scene painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir of a couple dancing in a café.

Their expressions and unified movement mark intimacy. It was painted in 1883 during the middle of his long career and set in Bougival, a French village 15km west of Paris which was a fashionable suburb and was the setting for a number of Impressionist paintings, such as The Slopes of Bougival by Alfred Sisley and Vue de Bougival by Renoir himself.

The woman depicted in the painting is Suzanne Valadon, a fellow impressionist painter who also modeled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Dance at Bougival has two other companion paintings also by Renoir – Dance in the Country and Dance in the City.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Dance at Bougival is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

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