La Moulin de la Galette, Museum d'Orsay, Oil on canvas, 131 cm. x 175 cm., 1876, Museum d'Orsay, Paris, rue de Lille, 62

With sunlight needling through the trees on a beauty summer day, young people dance, drink wine and flirt at the Moulin de la Galette cafe, near the Montmartre. This painting is one of the happiest Renoir's compositions, it introduces a number of portraits, which are the main components of the canvas. The nice impressionist feature - dapple of sun, flickering patches of light and shadow express the vibrancy of life and fascination of youth. It is in some degree a revolutionary painting. Not anyone artist before Renoir had thought of capturing daily life's aspects in a canvas of such large size.

At the table first at the right some Renoir's friends are depicted: Norbert Goeneutte, Frank Lamy and George Riviere. The girl on the front plan (in the striped dress) is thought to be Estelle, the younger sister of Renoir's model, Jeanne. The girl in the pink dress is another of artist's model Margot. She is dancing with the painter Cardenas.

Renoir painted some other versions of the Moulin de la Galette. A painting smaller than that one in the Louvre is now in the John Hay Whitney collection in the USA; a small design is now in the Ordrupgard Museum in Denmark. It is a matter of some doubt up to now which canvas was painted on the spot in the Moulin de la Galette cafe. If it was the Louvre largest canvas, it would in any case have been worked and finished in the artist's studio in Paris.