The Umbrellas

The Umbrellas (Les Parapluies) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, begun around 1880–81 and finished around 1885–86. Part of the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, it belongs to the National Gallery, London, and is shown in partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. It measures 180.3 by 114.9 cm.

The picture records a turning point in Renoir's career. Around the time he started it he felt he had come to the end of Impressionism; as he later told Ambroise Vollard, he thought he no longer knew how to paint or draw. A trip to Italy in 1881–82, where he admired Raphael's frescoes and ancient Roman wall paintings, and his growing regard for Ingres pushed him towards firmer drawing. He set the canvas aside and, about four years later, reworked it, apparently prompted by a major Impressionist exhibition due to open in New York in April 1886.

The two campaigns remain visible. The mother with her two daughters on the right and the woman opening her umbrella at the centre are painted with soft, feathery Impressionist touches. The left side, with the young milliner's assistant holding up her skirt and carrying a bandbox and the bearded man behind her, was repainted with clear outlines and smoother modelling. X-rays show that the young woman first wore a hat and a more elaborate dress. Fashion supports the dating: the clothes on the right were in vogue around 1881, while her plainer dress only became fashionable around 1885. Renoir also switched from chrome yellow and cobalt blue to Naples yellow and French ultramarine, which give the umbrellas their slate-grey tone. The National Gallery considers it his last large upright scene of modern life.

Renoir deposited the painting with Paul Durand-Ruel in 1890 and sold it to him in 1892 for a modest price. Hugh Lane bought it in 1907 and showed it in Dublin's Municipal Gallery from 1908 to 1913. After Lane died in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, it came to the National Gallery under his will in 1917, although an unwitnessed codicil suggested he had wanted his pictures to go to Dublin. Since a 1959 agreement it has alternated between London and Dublin.