A woman in Pennsylvania purchased a nude charcoal sketch for $12 at a local auction, later discovering it was a Pierre-Auguste Renoir drawing now potentially worth six figures. This fall, the Morgan Museum and Library will present "Renoir Drawings," the first exhibition dedicated to the artist's works on paper since 1921, bringing together over 100 drawings, pastels, watercolors, and prints. The show is organized thematically, covering Renoir's academic studies, sketches of modern life, and portraits, and will reunite finished works with preparatory drawings, including major loans from the Musée d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other institutions.
The exhibition matters because Renoir's drawings have been largely overlooked by collectors and curators, despite his prolific output of around 4,000 paintings. The show aims to illuminate how drawing was foundational to Renoir's practice, especially during his return to it in the late 1870s and 1880s, and helps contextualize his stylistic shifts across Impressionism, Classicism, and later modernism. It also underscores the ongoing rediscovery of undervalued aspects of major artists' careers, as highlighted by the recent $12 auction find.