Did Renoir paint two versions of his masterpiece, and which one is real?

Art · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Renoir’s 1876 Impressionist icon, Bal du moulin de la Galette, captures a vibrant Sunday in Montmartre. Yet, a smaller, nearly identical version exists, leaving experts to debate which canvas is the original. From a 1990 record-breaking auction to threats of cremation, the painting’s history is as dramatic as its brushwork.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir conceived his project to capture the dancing at the Moulin de la Galette in May 1876. To execute the work, he rented an abandoned cottage on the rue Cortot, utilizing its garden as a studio. His friend Georges Rivière, who documented the process, noted that the wind frequently threatened to blow the canvas away, a detail that leads some critics to argue the larger version—now housed at the Musée d'Orsay—was the one painted on-site. However, the smaller version, currently believed to be in a Swiss private collection, exhibits a more fluid, spontaneous style characteristic of en plein air painting.

The painting’s provenance is equally complex. It was once owned by Gustave Caillebotte from 1879 until his death in 1894, when it passed to the French Republic. It later moved through the Musée du Luxembourg and the Louvre before arriving at the d'Orsay in 1986. In 1990, the painting made headlines when it was sold at Sotheby's for US$78 million to Ryoei Saito. Saito’s later suggestion that he intended to cremate the masterpiece alongside a van Gogh sparked international outrage, though the painting was eventually sold confidentially to an undisclosed buyer following Saito's financial collapse.

Beyond the technical mystery of the two versions, the painting serves as a social record of Montmartre. It features various figures from Renoir’s circle, including fellow painters and his friend Rivière. One notable figure, the model Marguerite Legrand, known as Margot, is depicted dancing with a Cuban painter. She died of typhoid just two years later, with Renoir personally funding her treatment and funeral. While the Moulin de la Galette was a legendary cabaret, it began as a humble windmill selling pastries, a site captured in early photography by Hippolyte Bayard as early as 1842, long before it became a central subject for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists like Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec.

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