The Umbrellas
A crowd fills a Parisian street under a canopy of at least a dozen umbrellas, with six principal figures close to the front. Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted it in two campaigns separated by around four years, and the right half and the left half are in visibly different styles. The National Gallery in London holds it as NG3268 through the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest.
- About 1881–1886
- Oil on canvas
About Pierre-Auguste Renoir
What the painting shows
Six principal figures fill the foreground, and a milling crowd behind them almost completely blocks out the boulevard. The top quarter of the canvas is given over to overlapping umbrella domes in slate blue-grey, their pale wooden shafts crossing at angles. Above and behind them sit the green and orange of a tree and the grey face of an apartment block.
A young woman stands at the far left, bareheaded and without an umbrella, looking straight out at the viewer. Her chestnut hair is pinned up with a plait at the side and a dark band across it. A large open bandbox hangs on her left arm; her bare hand grips its rim, a pale strap runs across its mouth, and the inside is empty and dark.
A fashionably dressed woman stands at the centre in a dark blue bonnet worked in blue and green, a fur-trimmed cape and a round posy of pale flowers pinned at her chest. Her eyes are cast down. She holds a pale umbrella shaft in a gloved hand.
A small girl stands at the right in a navy coat trimmed with speckled pale lace at collar and cuffs, a bonnet carrying a bright blue and green plume, and a pale sash across her chest. She grips a wooden hoop and its stick with both hands and looks out at the viewer. A dark-gloved hand rests on her shoulder. An older girl stands behind her at the canvas edge in a cream lace bonnet.
Behind the woman at the left is a man in a dark bowler hat, his hand in a dark glove closed on a red-brown umbrella handle. Renoir signed the pavement at the lower right, beside a pair of buttoned dark blue boots.
Painted twice, four years apart
The National Gallery dates the picture to about 1881–6 and records that it was made in two stages with a gap of around four years between them. The first stage was most likely 1880–1, the second 1884–5.
Renoir had put the canvas aside. He was prompted to finish it when it was to be included in a major exhibition of Impressionist painting due to open in New York in April 1886.
In between he had reassessed his art. He told the dealer Ambroise Vollard that he had come to the end of Impressionism, had reached the conclusion that he did not know how to paint or draw, and was at a dead end. He sought what he called the instruction of the museums, and developed a particular admiration for Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, especially the drawings.
A trip to Italy from 1881 to 1882 sharpened the change. He was struck by Raphael's frescoes in the Villa Farnesina in Rome and by Roman wall paintings at Naples, and believed classical art had a purity and grandeur his own work lacked.
Where the style changes across the canvas
The group on the right belongs to the first campaign: the mother and her two daughters, and the woman in profile at the centre who looks up as she opens her umbrella. They are presented side-on and painted with delicate feathery touches of rich luminous blue, green and orange, suggesting the sheen of velvet and the texture of feathers and lace. Their facial features are softly modelled, without crisp contours.
The people on the left were originally painted with the same feathery touch, and at that stage the young woman wore a hat. Renoir repainted the group in the second campaign, abandoning the soft handling for a more linear style. These figures now have clearly defined outlines and precisely drawn features, and the brushwork around them is more even.
The National Gallery points to the flowing outlines of the young woman's head and torso as a mark of Renoir's attention to Ingres. Her long grey-blue dress is far more structured than the blue dresses of the women at the centre, which almost merge into one another, and its folds and lines are clearly described.
The clothes date the two halves
Changes in women's fashion give clear evidence of the four-year interval. The figures on the right wear expensive clothes that came into vogue around 1881 and stayed fashionable the following year.
The dress of the young woman on the left is quite different in cut, with more severe lines, and only came into fashion around 1885. The National Gallery notes that Renoir's women wear the latest fashions much as Ingres's Madame Moitessier does, and that a lithograph of his painting On the Terrace was used to illustrate a fashion magazine in 1882.
What the X-rays found
Close technical examination, including X-rays, has produced further evidence of the difference between the two halves. The underpainting of the two groups is completely dissimilar, and their paint surfaces were built up in quite distinct ways.
The figures on the right were initially only very loosely indicated and then gradually refined. The figures and forms on the left were clearly defined from the start, and Renoir made a number of alterations to them as the work progressed.
He also changed his pigments. He replaced chrome yellow and cobalt blue, his preferred colours from the mid-1870s, with Naples yellow and French ultramarine. Those produce the distinctive slate-grey tones that are most visible in the umbrellas themselves.
Left unresolved, then sold cheaply
Renoir did not reconcile the two halves before exhibiting the picture, although the discrepancy would have been obvious to viewers at the time and would have hurt its saleability. The National Gallery can only speculate why.
One possibility the museum raises is that he thought each group succeeded on its own terms. The more likely explanation it offers is that he regarded the painting, and particularly the group on the right, as a throwback to compositions he had moved away from after Italy.
He deposited the canvas with Paul Durand-Ruel in Paris on 30 April 1890, and the dealer bought it from him on 3 February 1892 for a very modest price given its size. It was the last of Renoir's large vertical paintings of modern life before he turned to landscapes, nudes and portraits.
The Lane bequest and the Dublin arrangement
Sir Hugh Lane bought the painting from Durand-Ruel in Dublin on 11 November 1907. It was exhibited with other nineteenth-century foreign pictures at the Municipal Gallery in Dublin from 1908 until 1913.
The Sir Hugh Lane Bequest brought it to the National Gallery in London in 1917. It went on display at the Tate Gallery, then called the National Gallery, Millbank, and was transferred from the Tate in 1935.
The National Gallery holds it in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, and it moves between the two. A long loan to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane ran from 2012 to 2019, and a further long loan began on 24 February 2026.
Close reading
Reading the work, detail by detail
The canvas was painted twice, about four years apart, and the join is visible without instruments. Moving from the hard outlines at the left to the feathery handling at the right shows two different painters' habits meeting in one crowd, and the umbrellas above them settle into a third manner again.
1.The woman at the left has a drawn outline
Her chestnut hair is pinned up with a plait at the side and a dark band across it, and she looks straight out. The edge where her jaw meets the collar is a single continuous line. Nothing about her is feathered into the background, which sets her apart from everyone on the right.
2.She is bareheaded in a crowd of hats
She wears no hat and carries no umbrella, alone among the figures near her. The National Gallery records that she did wear a hat at the first stage of the painting, and that Renoir removed it when he repainted this side four years later.
3.The bandbox is open, and empty
The box is tan, and its mouth is tilted towards the viewer so that the deep blue-black interior is fully visible. It is empty. A pale flat strap crosses the opening and passes over her forearm, and her bare ungloved hand grips the near rim.
4.The dress on the left is built, not brushed
The jacket and skirt are grey-blue, nipped at the waist, and each fold is described by a clear edge rather than a soft transition. The brushwork is even and runs with the form. The National Gallery dates this cut to around 1885, four years after the clothes on the right.
5.A dark glove on a red-brown handle
He wears a dark bowler with a curled brim, a moustache and a light beard, and an olive-grey coat with a white collar. His hand is in a dark glove, closed around a red-brown crooked handle. The handle is the warmest colour in the left third of the canvas.
6.The face at the centre has no contour
Her eyes are cast down and her mouth is slightly lifted. Blonde curls escape at the brow. The flesh is laid in with soft feathery touches and no drawn outline anywhere, so the cheek dissolves into the fur at her collar.
7.Blue and green worked wet into wet
The bonnet is a thicket of blue, dark green and pale blue with a pale plume at the top, the colours pushed into one another while wet. At her chest a round posy is built from white and pink dabs with green among them. Neither has a firm edge.
8.The child holds the hoop with both hands
Both her hands grip a pale wooden stick that lies across the top of a large hoop. The hoop hangs below, a wide pale ring crossing the pavement behind her boots. Her cuffs are trimmed with speckled blue and white lace.
9.A blue and green plume on the child's bonnet
The bonnet carries a yellow-cream ruffle around the face and a bright blue and green plume at one side, with a white ribbon hanging at the other. She looks straight out with brown eyes and a slight smile, the only child in the picture who does.
10.A gloved hand holds the child in place
A dark-gloved hand with a pale cuff comes down onto the child's shoulder from behind and stays there. Her coat beneath it is navy, trimmed with the same speckled pale lace as the cuffs. The hand is the only thing connecting her to the figures behind.
11.The canopy is slate, not blue
The domes overlap in slate blue-grey with greenish tints, and the strokes run along the line of the ribs rather than across them. Pale ochre shafts cut through at angles, ending in small tips. The National Gallery attributes the slate tone to Naples yellow and French ultramarine.
12.A tree and a building above the umbrellas
Green and orange strokes make a tree in the upper left corner, and behind it the pale grey face of an apartment block carries faint window openings. This narrow band is all the street Renoir allows. The crowd and the umbrellas take everything below it.
13.Buttoned boots on a wet pavement
Dark blue boots with a row of buttons up the side stand on pavement laid in with pale blue-grey and cream. The pale rim of the hoop passes behind them. The ground carries no puddles, only light broken across it in short strokes.
14.Signed on the pavement at the right
The signature reads Renoir, brushed in dark blue on the pale pavement at the lower right. It sits on the side of the canvas Renoir repainted last, below the figures whose outlines he had hardened.
Timeline
1880–1881
First campaign: Renoir paints the group on the right and the woman in profile at the centre with feathery Impressionist touches, then puts the canvas aside.
1881–1882
Travels in Italy, studying Raphael's frescoes in the Villa Farnesina and Roman wall paintings at Naples.
1884–1885
Second campaign: repaints the left-hand group in a harder linear style, removing the young woman's hat and changing his pigments.
1886
Finished for a major exhibition of Impressionist painting opening in New York in April.
1890
Deposited with Paul Durand-Ruel in Paris on 30 April.
1892
Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel on 3 February, for a very modest price for a picture of its size.
1907
Bought from Durand-Ruel by Sir Hugh Lane in Dublin on 11 November.
1908–1913
Exhibited at the Municipal Gallery in Dublin with other nineteenth-century foreign pictures.
1917
Enters the National Gallery, London, with the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest. Now NG3268.
1935
Transferred from the Tate Gallery to Trafalgar Square.
2012
Shown at the Frick Collection in Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, 7 February to 13 May.
Where to see it
The National Gallery, London
Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN, United Kingdom
Displays and loans can change. Check whether this work is on view before making a special trip.
Plan your visit on the museum’s official website (opens in a new tab)Frequently asked questions
Where is Renoir's The Umbrellas?
The National Gallery in London owns it as NG3268, in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, and the picture moves between the two. A long loan to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane began on 24 February 2026.
When did Renoir paint The Umbrellas?
The National Gallery dates it to about 1881–6. It was painted in two stages about four years apart, the first most likely in 1880–1 and the second in 1884–5.
Why are the two halves of The Umbrellas in different styles?
Renoir put the canvas aside, travelled in Italy, and came back to it after deciding he had reached the end of Impressionism. The right-hand group keeps the soft feathery handling of 1880–1; the left-hand figures were repainted with hard outlines and precisely drawn features.
How do we know The Umbrellas was painted in two campaigns?
Three ways. The styles differ. The clothes on the right came into fashion around 1881, while the dress on the left only did so around 1885. X-rays also show that the two groups have completely dissimilar underpainting and were built up in different ways.
Who is the woman with the box in The Umbrellas?
The National Gallery describes her as a milliner's assistant, identified by the bandbox for carrying hats on her arm and by her plainer clothes. She is not named. At the first stage of painting she wore a hat, which Renoir removed when he repainted her.
What pigments did Renoir change in The Umbrellas?
He replaced chrome yellow and cobalt blue, which he had favoured since the mid-1870s, with Naples yellow and French ultramarine. Those give the slate-grey tones that show most clearly in the umbrellas.
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References
The sources below include collection records, catalogues, scholarly research, and primary materials that informed this page. They document The Umbrellas, its making, and its place in cultural history.
1The Umbrellas: public-domain reproduction
WebsiteWikimedia CommonsUsed forThe reproduction is the primary visual source for the close-reading details; rights metadata is preserved separately.
2Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Umbrellas — collection record and in-depth text
WebsiteThe National Gallery, LondonUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the The Umbrellas page.
View source3Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WebsiteThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the The Umbrellas page.
4Bal du moulin de la Galette (Auguste Renoir) — Musée d'Orsay
WebsiteMusée d'OrsayUsed forThe earlier Montmartre crowd scene, painted before the change of handling.
These references provide the documented foundation for this work's history and interpretation. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
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