Sous la tonnelle

Renoir painted this in 1876 in the garden of the Moulin de la Galette, the open-air dance hall on the hill of Montmartre where working Parisians came to drink, dance and flirt on Sunday afternoons. That same year, in that same spot, he was at work on his large crowded picture of the dancing there, one of the best-known images of the whole Impressionist decade. This is the quieter offshoot, a couple settled under the arbour, dappled light falling through the leaves onto the tablecloth and their clothes. Renoir loved that broken, shifting sunlight and chased it all summer. The canvas later belonged to the Moscow collector Ivan Morozov, which is how it came to hang in Russia.