We are pleased to be able to present "Renoir: Tradition and Innovation" at the National Art Center, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), the impressionist master, is beloved throughout the world as "the painter of happiness." During a painting career spanning more than fifty years, he treated a wider variety of subjects than most other impressionist painters, including female portraits and nudes as well as landscapes, still lifes, and decorative pictures.

This exhibition is made up of approximately 80 works from major collections inside and outside of Japan, including works on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and Musée d'Orsay, Paris. It follows Renoir from his beginnings as a progressive painter to his eventual success as a portraitist, showing how he never became content with previous achievements and continued to experiment throughout his life in the gap between traditional approaches to painting and modernist innovation. Studies of Renoir's painting technique were carried out on the occasion of this exhibition with advanced optical technology, and the results oh these studies are presented alongside the painting.

We would like to express our heartfelt appreciation to the Pola Museum of Art for its tremendous effort in preparing for this exhibition and to other museums and collectors for their generous loans of valuable works of art. We would also like to thank everyone else who provided various forms of assistance, cooperation, and support.