An exhibition opened yesterday at The Frick Collection that studies Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s uses of the full-length portrait format – all nine of them.

“This is the first comprehensive study of the artist’s engagement with the full-length format,” according to the museum. “The format was associated with the official Paris Salon from the mid-1870s to mid-1880s, the decade that saw the emergence of a fully fledged Impressionist aesthetic.

“The project was inspired by Renoir’s La Promenade of 1875-76, the most significant Impressionist work in the Frick’s permanent collection. Intended for public display, the vertical grand-scale canvases in the exhibition are among the artist’s most daring and ambitious presentations of contemporary subjects and are today considered masterpieces of Impressionism. The show and accompanying catalogue draw on contemporary criticism, literature, and archival documents to explore the motivation behind Renoir’s full-length figure paintings as well as their reception by critics, peers, and the public. Recently-undertaken technical studies of the canvases will also shed new light on the artist’s working methods.

“Works on loan from international institutions are La Parisienne from the National Museum Wales, Cardiff; The Umbrellas (Les Parapluies) from The National Gallery, London (first time since 1886 on view in the United States); and Dance in the City and Dance in the Country from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Paintings coming from American institutions are The Dancer from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Madame Henriot “en travesti” (The Page) from the Columbus Museum of Art; Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg) from The Art Institute of Chicago; and Dance at Bougival from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting” runs through May 13 at The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, at Fifth Avenue, 212-288-0700, frick.org.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer. He blogs at Artblog.net.