"Dance at the Moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir is one of the most joyful and celebratory paintings in the history of art." "I think possibly the secret of the appeal of LMDLG is that the picture really stands for Paris and for pleasure." "It's almost as if you're there, coming down the stairs, looking out over the dance floor and becoming involved in the painting itself." "It does two things." "It transports us, the viewer, back in time to fun times in Paris, but it also brings Paris to us." "It's sort of like party time." "It's so lively." "The people are obviously having a good time." "Yet it was painted at a time when Paris was still stained with the blood of thousands of men and the Moulin de la Galette dance hall was associated with revolutionaries and subversives." "It's also one of the most controversial paintings in the world, sold at auction for a record price that shook the art world." "I thought the world had gone mad to tell you the truth." "I really was just sort of shaking my head, thinking my goodness." "This is actually the story of two paintings, one a high profile masterpiece, the other its elusive double, rarely seen in public and currently kept in a secret location." "Dance at the Moulin de la Galette is a scene from a Montmartre dance hall on a sunny Sunday afternoon." "It's been described as the quintessential impressionist painting, and the most beautiful picture of the nineteenth century." "It seems that Renoir was himself" "barely changing a single detail except for the size." "A large version, measuring almost six feet wide, hangs in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris." "The other painting is only half as big and has not been seen in public since 1990." "What's never been known is which was completed first since they both carry the date 1876." "In that year, Renoir was a 35 bachelor living in Montmartre." "The Moulin de la Galette had become a favourite local haunt and he apparently never missed the Sunday dance that he has lovingly painted here." "I think you can see it certainly as a sort of lifestyle picture and the young men in the foreground in particular on the right are young bohemian artist friends of Renoir's and this is the world in which Renoir," "who by this stage was in his mid 30s, this is very much the world in which he himself was living." "The Moulin de la Galette dance hall was perched at the top of Montmartre hill, then the highest point in Paris." "Montmartre had and I guess in some ways still has, despite the tourists, a sort of atmosphere of being somewhere different, because it's up on the hill." "It has and certainly had at the time, a sort of villagey feel, a sense that it was on the edges of the country, a sense that it was some place different and certainly a sense that it wasn't ruled by the sort of domination of modern Paris" "which you felt when you got down off the hill." "The rest of Paris had been radically redeveloped by Baron Hausmann whose pattern of wide boulevards characterises the city today." "But Montmartre remained almost rural its orchards and windmills virtually untouched." "I think what he liked about Montmartre in a way was" "Montmartre has a haven of traditional things, again windmills and all that sort of stuff which people love to this day." "at one time thirty windmills could be seen on the hill, by 1876 just two idol mills remained the property of the Debray family who turned one of them into a viewing tower where visitors could enjoy a panoramic view of Paris." "In between the two windmills they opened a dance hall, comprising of a large shed with tables and chairs and a courtyard for dancing in fine weather." "It was called Le Moulin de la Galette, a galette being a traditional flat pastry that the Debrays had always baked and sold at the windmill." "On Sundays the doors opened at 3 o'clock and the band would play for hours." "The locals, on their one day off, would energetically dance until midnight." "By the mid 1870s the dance hall was proving a successful business, known throughout Paris." "Renoir, by choosing to paint LMDLG, was painting somewhere that he knew that people would recognise lt was a well known place for people to go and hang out and to to dance or enjoy themselves, from way back in the earlier part of the 19th century." "Today one of the original windmills is still standing, but tucked away in the middle of a private complex, barely visible among the trees." "A second replica windmill marks the spot of one of the city's most celebrated landmarks." "While working on the painting," "Renoir took a studio in the heart of Montmartre in rue Cortot." "At the rear was a large, overgrown garden." "For Renoir, it was an oasis of bygone charms." "Renoir as a child lost his family home in the very centre of Paris with the rebuilding of the city and ever after that he kept looking for little corners of the city that were original and and old fashioned and he certainly found that in Montmartre" "and it is in the 1870s a place where he found he felt very much at home, he very much liked the way of life that was emerging there, the entertainments, the friendliness of the people and the access to nature." "Just a short walk away from the studio was the Moulin de la Galette." "His artist son, Jean Renoir, later wrote "Renoir loved the place because its simple amusements typified so well the good natured side of the common people of Paris."" "They would be completely mystified by an artist in their community." "So I think that's one of the reasons why Renoir moved to rue Cortot was to build this trust within the community so that he could engage these models to sit for him." "The painting features some of Renoir's favourite local girls that he used as models." "The two in the foreground were sisters:" "standing is Jeanne, a seamstress aged about sixteen." "She was initially reluctant to pose for Renoir but relented because she needed the money." "She features in another of his pictures from this period," "The Swing, which he painted in the garden of Rue Cortot." "Sitting on the bench is her younger sister Estelle." "In her distinctive striped dress she also appears in other paintings." "Dancing in the background is another local girl," "Marguerite Legrand, known as Margot." "She was a type of woman that he particularly liked to paint, although she was very unreliable." "She often failed to turn up and Renoir would find her drinking with her friends." "But he was always very fond of her." "Two years after painting her here, she died from an attack of smallpox and Renoir paid for her funeral." "The men are all part of Renoir's bohemian circle." "Dancing with Margot is a Cuban painter called Pedro Vidal de Solares y Cardenas." "He was a popular member of the circle who liked learning local Montmartre slang from Margot." "Sitting with his back to us is Pierre Franc Lamy, an artist friend who encouraged Renoir to paint the Moulin de la Galette in the first place." "It seems that Lamy saw an initial sketch in Renoir's studio and urged him to complete the painting." "Opposite Lamy is another artist, Norbert Goeneutte." "A serious type, he was apparently the least likely to be found dancing." "Finally there's Georges Riviere," "Renoir's closest friend who later wrote his biography." "It think the painting represents two worlds in two different senses." "The women are mostly lower class women from Montmartre as far as we can understand they're represented as that." "Whereas the men are men who have come in presumably from outside, either bohemians young artists and writers who are in a sense slumming it, or even more fashionable figures like the top hatted figure in the background." "Clearly Renoir wants us to see the LMDLG as a place where men and women socialise in a joyful classless harmony, but there was a darker side to 19th century dance halls which he suppressed." "They were sites of prostitution, so in other words these balls have to do with the creation of a new public sociability and this public sociability is about high capitalism, it's about sexual exploitation, you name it," "and there's none of that in this painting." "By the 1870s, industrialisation had wiped out much of the old rustic way of life and most working class women lived and worked in appalling conditions." "In Montmartre, many of them worked long days as seamstresses earning a pittance, and prostitution was often a financial necessity." "The vision that Renoir adumbrates of a happy, healthy completely contented group of young women frolicking about with their companions is one which is really his fantasy rather than a representation of the reality of women's lives at the time." "I think it's very important to realise that what he is doing is creating an illusory world, a kind of urban idyll, an escapist world, an earthly paradise as he might have called it, in the 19th century but situated here" "within the confines of a particular specific urban space." "He's in that sense very very interested in preserving a fantasy of a traditional notion of femininity located in nature, located in history, something which he felt was very threatened." "Renoir is not a gritty realist." "Anything he looks at, anything he paints, he romanticises." "I suppose there were dingy and dirty corners of Montmartre and louche people and all that, but that isn't what he saw." "He did turn it into a kind of wonderful fantasy of friendship and enjoyment." "Renoir was certainly wasn't unaware of the poverty around him." "In the very summer of 1876, he was so concerned about the number of children left to roam the streets of Montmartre while their mothers were at work that he organised a charity ball at the Moulin de la Galette" "to raise money for a creche." "Renoir once said that there was no such thing as poverty in art." "I don't think that was to deny that poverty existed it's just that he wanted to elevate the subject through art and he transforms the sordid into the poetic." "Renoir's vision is so selective that the painting becomes as interesting for what it doesn't show as what it does." "In fact the picture was conceived and created in times of extraordinary political repression and Montmartre had been at the forefront of these troubles." "Following the Franco Prussian war, in 1871 resistance developed in pockets of Paris to the new French Government." "For three months a group of workers established a revolution and called themselves The Commune." "The National Government declared war on the city of Paris." "From its key position high above the city," "Montmartre became a site of strategic importance and the Moulin de la Galette was itself occupied by the Commune." "LMDLG was strategically important during the siege of Paris and was chosen as a site to install these large navy guns." "In May 1871, a fierce battle that lasted a week led to the defeat of the Commune." "At least 20,000 Communards died in what came to be called the Semaine Sanglante the week of blood." "In the years following the Commune," "France entered a period of moral repression." "This was a monarchist regime, very anti Republican, and closely linked to the Church." "Montmartre was now firmly associated with left wing rebellion and immorality." "It was thus a very deliberate choice to site the new baslica of The Sacre Coeur right on the top of Montmartre hill." "It was meant to atone for the crimes committed during the siege, and when construction began in 1875 the whole character of Renoir's beloved Montmartre seemed to be placed in jeopardy." "When Renoir was resident in rue Cortot, on the one hand 100 metres away he must have heard the bal du Moulin de la Galette and the trombones and the violins and the dance music." "On the other side there must have been the steam hammers that he heard building the Sacre Coeur." "When Renoir painted the Moulin de la Galette in 1876, its notorious side could not have escaped him." "After the Paris Commune of 1871, any sort of meeting place like this and particularly a celebrated one, would have had a reputation that was in a sense dangerous." "Dangerous partly because of imputations of illicit sexuality but also because of politics because Montmartre was so associated with the Paris Commune." "I think its reputation in 1876 was very mixed and uh the predominant member the political one, he neglects." "is it possible then that Renoir was making a statement of his own in depicting the Moulin de la Galette so joyfully?" "I think one can read it as an act of defiance." "One can see in its celebratory mood," "Renoir transforming this very politically sensitive site into one which is full of people enjoying themselves, defying the common sensibility that LMDLG is disreputable." "It's not disreputable at all." "It's a place where people enjoy themselves, where families go, where Renoir and his colleagues relax." "I think Renoir is trying to suggest that the people concerned were not really as bad as they were made out to be." "He placed himself always as an outsider, he hated the idea of sort of established authorities, he certainly hated the idea of established authority in art aswell and he sets himself up as a sort of free wheeling bohemian I think." "It doesn't make him into a hard line radical republican but certainly would have been deeply opposed to the repressive government of that particular moment." "Deliberately political or not," "Renoir's painting does seem to present an alternative view of society." "It's a kind of art that completely occludes any of the social tensions or realities of lived experience and I think in many ways it's an escapist art." "He's very much the painter of a France that's going through terrific, very painful social change to which he is hostile." "So you could say that as a fantasy LMDLG expresses a very deep reactionary desire to put things back the way they were." "Renoir was the son of a tailor and dressmaker and lost no time in taking up a trade of his own." "From the age of thirteen he worked as a porcelain painter making a very good living until mechanisation replaced the skill of painting by hand." "He's very much part of, a socially speaking, a bit of 18th century Paris that's lost in the 19th century." "So in a sense, his refusal to see modern life and to accept modern life which inspires LMDLG is very expressive of his particular situation as an artisan who's working the way that people have been working for centuries." "All his life, Renoir demonstrated a nostalgia for the 18th century and this became his artistic focus also." "He was particularly influenced by the Fete Champetre paintings of Watteau and Boucher in which men and women flirtatiously revelled in one another's company." "I think it's at this moment with LMDLG that he's in fact closest to Watteau, closest to the idea of the Fete Champetre, closest to this strange sort of play of courtship in an open air situation." "Renoir it seems had made a study of the coquettish interactions between the sexes and he fills the canvas with these intimate cameos." "He wants the women to look gorgeous, he wants the men to look as though they're attracted to the women." "It's a great statement about sexuality and about sexual attraction and that's what makes the painting live, because this is one of the great constants of human existence and it really comes through in this picture." "There's a lot of looking, a lot of gazing going on in the picture." "Young men are looking at young women, young women are looking at men, figures look out at us, at the artist initially but also at us, and that's going on throughout the picture." "Aswell we've got this woman looking at us with this strange rather sad haunting look on her face." "All over if you look at the picture, people are touching one another and in that sense the whole picture is infused with a kind of sensuality." "You have the dancing couples throughout the picture who seem to hold each other rather tightly, they seem to take pleasure in each other's bodies." "There is nothing detached or distant between these couples." "They dance together in a kind of abandoned series of gestures and points of contact and those points of contact are all over the picture for example the young woman in the front who puts her arm around her companion just in front of her." "Renoir's romantic vision of life at the Moulin de la Galette was not shared by every artist to climb the hills." "This renowned venue was painted by some of the most famous artists in the world and others too." "Two years after Renoir, the Italian artist Federico Zandomeneghi depicted it very differently, showing hunched figures scuttling anonymously into the entrance." "It's a very different portrayal than Renoir." "There's none of the sense of joy, that celebratory mood." "There's no sense of community, it's just it could be anywhere in Paris." "Montmartre's most famous artist," "Toulouse Lautrec made his contribution in 1889." "Again, the regulars are portrayed as inhabiting a seedy demimonde." "It's interesting that Lautrec when he paints it does so at night, it's nightlife, there's something more sinister, more edgy about it." "Whereas Renoir's aesthetic choice is to depict sunshine, daylight and a kind of general geniality." "It's a very different vision of the place than than Lautrec had." "In 1900, Picasso chose the Moulin de la Galette as the subject for his first painting of Paris." "Although slightly more fashionable, the exuberance of Renoir's version is still missing." "It's so dark, so mysterious, so sombre, so sinister that it's just like they are two different places." "Van Gogh too added his name to the list and once again depicted a bleak, unwelcoming site." "Renoir gives very much an insider's view, someone who's there, someone who knows the dance hall, someone who knows the community, someone who has been there on a daily basis." "Whereas Van Gogh and Zandomeneghi seem to have portrayed LMDLG based simply on its reputation." "It's a very much more sinister point of view." "I wouldn't want to say that one of these visions is true and one of these visions is false." "Renoir is using it to suggest something about a way of life and Zandomeneghi and Van Gogh in turn are creating different sorts of images... to suggest different ideas about particular ways of life." "It doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong and that we can as it were criticise Renoir for not really showing what it's like." "All of these pictures are fictions." "There is however one element of the scene that Renoir strove to convey as accurately as possible: the light." "As an impressionist in this early stage of his career, his aim was to capture the changing light and colour in nature and convey the immediacy of the moment on canvas." "No painter really before Renoir had ever observed in such a focussed way the effect of light coming down through trees and dappling across forms." "You've got all this wonderful dappled light through the figures." "When you look at the trees, they are all rather flat, there's no sense of brilliant highlights of the leaves catching the light as the sun comes through and Renoir didn't want that." "Quite clearly." "He didn't want to divert our attention from the figures." "Nowadays we think of Renoir as a kind of chocolate box, beautiful, splendid, wonderful vision of the world." "Nobody looks at a Renoir and thinks oh my goodness, it's sketchy, it's messy, it's not finished, it's ugly." "But they did in the 19th century." "Because the technique which to us now seems so tame, so acceptable in the 19th century was very risky." "Instead of blending colours seamlessly, as they were trained to do, the impressionists applied paint in bright, solid touches of colour that sat boldly on the canvas, making no attempt to conceal the presence of the brush." "There's a wonderful variety to the brushwork, areas where the brushwork is very very cohesive and a lot of care been taken in get in a sense, and one can see that especially through here, in the rendering of the dress." "In other places there's a more attacky approach with great slashes of thick paint." "One sees that expecially through the dress with Riviere on the right here there's a lot of very fine painting." "I mean he's given us the stubble, he's given us the formation of the lips, and he's obviously used a very very fine brush and painted it carefully." "It may well be because this was a great friend of the artist and he wanted to paint a considered portrait of his friend." "Riviere later recalled with great relish his role in the making of the picture and included an interesting detail." "He claimed that Renoir faithful to the impressionist preference of working outdoors in front of the subject always went to the dance hall to work on the picture:" ""We would carry this canvas every day from the rue Cortot to the Moulin, because the painting was executed entirely on the spot." "This was not without difficulties, when the wind blew and the big canvas threatened to fly away like a kite." ""But Riviere's account was written 45 years after the event, and cannot be seen as a reliable source." "Today, opinion is divided." "When you look at the size of the picture that does seem a trifle impractical and in fact everything we know about the impressionist practice is that when pictures were as big as this they did actually work on them in the studio." "But we do still have the story and it's possible he did do a sort of show off performance of carting it down the road and just showing off that he was this great outdoor painter." "But I can't believe for a minute that he finished it outside." "I think that Renoir probably did paint most of his canvas there." "I think it is important to stress that he really did need to have the motif in front of his eyes and that he really had to feel the mood of the place." "It's very hard to control the tonal and formal unity of a picture that big only working in the changing light out of doors." "And I think it is reasonable to assume that he touched up, he pulled things together, he carried on work on it back in the studio." "Riviere only writes about one painting only, but there are of course two versions of Moulin de la Galette." "The smaller one is often described as more sketchy, usually by those experts to believe that this was the picture Renoir painted first." "I think this has got much more freshness, it's much more sort of painterly, more spontaneous feel about it." "I'm sure that this is the first version." "It's much easier for the artist to have taken in and out of the place where he was painting it, the other picture is much bigger and I would think that this was sort of the first version and the other is a sort of fair copy." "The small version..." "is rather more streaky in its style." "The figures are still less solid than they are in the big version but you're much more aware of the brushstroke, of the texture of the brushwork." "But I think there's something about the evenness of the handling, the evenness of the technique that is just slightly mechanical and makes me really sure that the picture must be a replica, a small replica that was done afterwards." "With no documentary evidence to clarify the chronology, the only clues lie in the canvases themselves." "To try and settle a long running debate, the two paintings were placed side by side for the very first time at the Musee d'Orsay in 1990." "We spent a lot of time trying to decide which was the first version." "Logically what you would think that the smaller version which would be more easily portable, would be the one which the artist would have worked on on the site, and then he would have taken it home and worked it up into the larger version." "But there was contradictory evidence both ways." "We really couldn't come up with any convincing evidence to show which one preceded the other." "We may never know which one Renoir painted first, but the size of the Orsay version tells us that this was the one he intended for public exhibition." "He painted on a big scale because he wanted to show what he could do." "I mean in that sense it's a true masterpiece, an evidence of mastery, of his skill as a painter." "We have letters and he says I'm painting a large composition and it will cost me money but I'm doing it while I can do it or while I have the time and the opportunity to do it." "What you have here is Renoir attempting to paint a very large number of people in a complex space and to suggest something of the complexity of this space, so you have the large group around the table at right," "middle distance you have people dancing and then in the background you can see even more physical activity." "and he pulls it off in the sense that it becomes an entirely believable space." "We are convinced that we too could move through it." "I think the greatest stroke of genius that Renoir brings to the composition of this picture is this gap between the two seats because it leaves a space available for us to enter into the larger space of the dance floor." "On the extreme right and on the extreme left we have figures that are arbitrarily cut off." "They're not composed entirely, we just see part of this woman." "We see most of Riviere on the right there but we don't see all of him and this adds to the sense that we're kind of looking at the space informally as well as it offsets the formality of the structuring," "of the careful structuring of the composition." "And of course the ultimate glory of the painting is that he really brought it off." "The picture was first shown in the 3rd lmpressionist Exhibition in April 1877 where it was greeted with a mixed response." "Many critics did not really understand this new language of art." "They felt the subjects were within their grasp but they did not understand the manner, the language in which they were being painted." "One critic wrote:" ""The figures are dancing on a floor that looks like the purplish blue clouds darkening the sky on a stormy day." ""The painting did however have its supporters." ""The joyful light fills every corner of the canvas and even the shadows reflect it...." "The whole painting shimmers like a rainbow...." "Riviere wrote his own review, and he exault his pictures's modernity." "'lt's a page out of history, a precious monument of Parisian life." "No one before Renoir had thought of portraying an event in ordinary life on a canvas of such big dimensions.'" "Most importantly for Renoir, the painting found a buyer." "Gustave Caillebotte was a wealthy artist who was himself exhibiting in 1877." "Two years later, he painted a self portrait and included in the background is Dance at the Moulin de la Galette." "We see it in reverse which means he must have viewed it, as well as himself, in the mirror." "It must have been hanging there behind him as he sat painting himself." "I'm sure that by putting it in there, in the background of this self portrait he's indicating that it is the key picture he owns, really the cornerstone of his collection." "Caillebotte acquired some of the most significant works of the time and did so with a purpose." "At a very young age he made a will specifying that his entire collection of paintings, numbering more than sixty, would be donated to the French state." "Caillebotte died in 1894, at the age of only 45 and so by 1897 Dance at the Moulin de la Galette was hanging in the Musee de Luxembourg, one of the first impressionist works to enter the museum." "Since 1986 the painting has hung in the Musee d'Orsay where it has become emblematic of Paris an essential experience for every tourist." "Its placement today as a pilgrimage piece is exactly in the Muse D'Orsay is exactly what Renoir intended it to be." "It's really one of the few very best known pictures in this museum." "This is a very warm picture and everybody has a relationship easily made with this painting." "While Caillebotte ensured that his painting was accessible to all, the other smaller version has always been more elusive." "It was first bought by Victor Chocquet, another keen collector of the time." "Since then it has passed through the hands of some of the world's wealthiest collectors." "In 1929, it was bought by the financier and publisher John Hay Whitney, who allowed it to be exhibited from time to time." "After his death," "Whitney's widow reluctantly decided to sell the painting in 1990." "Paintings like that don't come up on the market very often, that's the problem, with it you know." "The big icons are in a museums and they are untouchable so for this to be on the market was an unusual occurrence." "The sale of the Whitney picture took place at Sotheby's in New York on May 17th 1990." "In the art world, that's a day that will never be forgotten." "Prices been soaring since the sale Iris 50 million and when this came along Renoir it was probably the most incredible painting ever sold action." "It was a grand big moment." "We knew that we were possibly going to make history." "That evening, the sale of Dance at the Moulin de la Galette did indeed make history." "Eventually it just comes down to two people and I was bidding against a Sotheby's agent" "and he is just working really hard." "Just think of pedalling uphill." "And the bidding slows down the higher you go and he's really working and I had I was very lucky because I had a client that was very determined." "I felt invincible." "I had a lot of money and I knew he was determined to buy this one and there wasn't a limit at all." "With commission, the painting's final price was $78. 1 million dollars or £ 46 million, which is still the second highest price ever paid for a painting." "It was bought by Ryoei Saito, a Japanese paper tycoon who had just bought the world's most expensive painting:" "Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet for 82 and a half million dollars." "I thought the world had gone mad to tell you truth." "I really was just sort of shaking my head, thinking my goodness." "I couldn't believe it, it was unbelievable." "A work of art has an aspect as a commodity and has an aspect as an aesthetic object and what happened with this is that its aspect as a commodity really eclipsed its aspect as a work of art completely." "That painting should have remained here, it should have remained in a public institution for people to be able to enjoy, if for no other reason than to judge it as superior to the version at the Musee d'Orsay." "When the painting arrived in Japan," "Saito put it straight into a climate controlled vault and there it remained for the next seven years, unavailable to the world." "Renoir didn't paint the painting to have it go into a warehouse." "Impressionists went to museums to see great works of art and they hoped that their paintings would go into museums and so I think to have it in a warehouse completely negated really the intention of the artist." "Generally people resent very much the fact that private owners keep paintings in store rooms and I think it's a cynical way to look at pictures." "The painting was out of sight but at least it was in a safe place until Saito declared that he would like to be cremated with both the Van Gogh and the Renoir to avoid billions of yen in inheritance tax." "Saito later claimed it was a joke but the art world took it very seriously." "Saito was 7 4 when he bought the painting." "Within a few years both his health and his finances were looking very shaky." "When he died in 1996, the Renoir painting was seized by the bank as an asset, the Saito paper empire having crumbled." "Then in 1997 Sotheby's once again sold the painting, reportedly at the bargain price of $50 million dollars." "But this time it was a secret negotiation, with no publicity, no headlines and no name." "It's a very well kept secret." "Whoever owns it and I'm assuming it's a private collector, it really has to be a private collector, it's somebody who doesn't want this publicity which he would inevitably receive, instead he wants to keep it completely private" "and completely to himself." "Most of the clients that I helped were very private." "There was once a quote from one of them who said the whale that spouts gets harpooned and so they like to go underground." "They don't like all the limelight, they don't like the newspaper headlines." "But there can only be so many people in the world who can afford to buy a painting for $50 million." "I can't imagine who would own this painting, who would have the resources to pay that kind of money for something, for their own private delectation." "I do not know if it is a dealer or a consortium or whatever, no idea at all." "I'm told on good authority that it's in a private collection in Switzerland and it was bought by, he was the under bidder of the original sale." "I have a pretty clear idea of where the painting is right now." "I think it is in Switzerland in a private collection." "I don't think the identity of this collector will be revealed in the near future." "While somebody, somewhere is enjoying their own permanent private view of the Moulin de la Galette, the rest of us are offered many ways of appreciating the painting in reduced format." "The question can be asked what would Renoir have thought of his images being used in such a way." "He was not the most intellectual of the impressionists, he said so himself." "His paintings were supposed to be pretty, yes pretty he said and so this idea of spreading prettiness and happiness as one of his core values as an artist is essentially what fridge magnets and chocolate boxes are doing." "Meanwhile the treasured image is still generating pleasure on thousands of living rooms." "Where it's situated here, when people come in the front door and walk through the hallway and down into the living room, this is the first thing that catches their eye." "It makes me feel very happy to have this painting in my house." "I really love Renoir, he's one of my most favourite of the impressionist paintings." "It looks like everybody's having a good time and it's a happy happy scene." "This one is such a happy scene." "It can't help but make you happy." "And they always say, 'Oh!" "That's so.... where did you get that pic....?" "'" "They just love it and so do I." "I have other fifteen Renoir paintings, but this is my favourite." "The painting is now emblematic of pleasure, and enjoyment." "In 1976, Rod Stewart chose it for the cover of his first solo album," "A Night on the Town, adding himself to the group of bon viveurs in one of the more sophisticated examples of a rock and roll lifestyle." "While film did not exist when Renoir was painting, there is this notion of stop action with LMDLG and it's something that captures our attention instantly in front of the painting, much more than a simple portrait or other scenes that he painted." "I believe these snap shot type images produced by Renoir invite us into them, they make us wonder and imagine what the stories are that are taking place, why are those two people talking, what's going on in that corner." "The illusion of reality and artifice break down in these paintings that are so film like, so stop action and they bring the viewer in in a way that I think is absolutely brilliant." "Renoir's joyful vision of the Moulin de la Galette is an ambitious and complex work that broke new ground." "It's also deeply democratic and wishful." "A hope for a way of life that was doomed, no wonder we respond to it with heart first, mind a little later." "Renoir creates an image of loveliness and liveliness to which people respond very directly, very passionately and in that sense it's enough just simply to enjoy the lovely scene he lays out in front of us." "I love this painting because it works on so many levels:" "structurally, in terms of its colour, in terms of its humanity, in terms of its observation of dappled light, in its utterly marvellous joie de vivre." "This is a panacea, panacea in a way that it is still capable of providing huge satisfaction to us that we can see in a banal and insignificant aspect of every day life, a true joy."