Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s oil-on-canvas The Swing was unwrapped in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts which is getting ready to open the first-ever large-scale exhibition of the French master’s works in Hungary.

“We practically have an embarrassment of choices this time with the number of main titles we have managed to loan for the exhibition,” László Baán, the director of the museum, told reporters at the event.

He noted that with the Hungarian government’s support, the museum had acquired Renoir’s 1903 work Reclining Nude for 12.3 million US dollars in 2019.

Renoir painted two more versions of that work which have never been seen together before, sparking the idea for the museum’s exhibition entitled “Renoir – The Painter and His Models”, Baán said.

In addition to the other versions of Reclining Nude, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, around 70 works from over 20 public collections will be on display at the Museum of Fine Arts from September 22.

The works have been insured for around 400 billion forints (EUR 1bn), said Baán. The Renoir show will run until January 7, 2024.

Renoir Exhibition At Museum Of Fine Arts Extended Until Jan 21 

The Painter and His Models, an exhibition of Renoir’s works in Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts, has been extended by two weeks until January 21, the museum announced.

In response to great demand, the exhibition will also be open on Mondays, and the museum will open an hour earlier, at 9am, on weekends, the statement said.

Originally, the exhibition was going to close on January 7 but the museum has managed to agree about extending it with the international institutions that had lent some works.

The nearly 70 paintings on display including such masterpieces as The Swing, Dance at Bougival and Claude Renoir in Clown Costume, have been arranged in chronological order and by theme to illustrate the artist’s development, the museum said, adding that the exhibition is the first such show in Hungary dedicated to the impressionist artist alone.

This is also the first time all three versions of Gabrielle are on display together, the first of which has been owned by the Budapest museum since 2019.

The exhibition has been mounted in cooperation with Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.