Meditate with Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Do you hear the accordion singing under the arbors of this shady square? It’s Sunday, and in the mildness of the first days of spring, every opportunity is good to take out the ladies’ toiletries and the gentlemen’s boaters. In the center, couples form for a dance. There are the regulars of the guinche, who meet up to have good times with friends. But there are also neophytes jumping into the bath of these Parisian events which attract crowds every weekend. To do this, you have to leave the heart of the City of Lights and venture beyond the main boulevards, into the working-class neighborhoods, where workers and maids rub shoulders with penniless artists and cursed writers.

The Moulin de la Galette, one of the last in the heights of Montmartre, has become a rallying sign since it is surrounded by restaurants and gambling dens, ballrooms and games rooms of all kinds. Here, the dancing crowd represented by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is youthful and mixes with intoxication, far from the bourgeois conventions of the beautiful neighborhoods. At the impressionist school that he attended, the painter makes light and shadows vibrate on this moving humanity, under lanterns which will light up at dusk. For now, the anisette is flowing freely, fueling the passionate discussions. The bodies hold each other, squeeze, brush against each other, move away and find each other again. It feels like a wedding. A few crumbs of eternal life.