Young Girls at the Piano

English

Young Girls at the Piano: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Price: Price on Request
Art Type: Oil Painting
Size:
English Comments: 0
International Comments: 0
Creating Date:
Introduction and Works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir >>

Contemporary-Art.org

Reproduction

Enlarge

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil Painting - Young Girls at the Piano

Keywords: Young, Girls, Piano

Work Overview: Young Girls at the Piano (Two girls at the piano)
Artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Year 1892
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 116 cm × 90 cm (46 in × 35 in)
Location Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Young Girls at the Piano (French: Jeunes filles au piano) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. The painting was completed in 1892 as an informal commission for the Musée du Luxembourg. Renoir painted three other variations of this composition in oil and two sketches, one in oil and one in pastel. Known by the artist as repetitions, they were executed to fulfill commissions from dealers and collectors.[1] The work is on public display at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Renoir depicts two young girls at a piano in a bourgeois home, one in a white dress with blue sash seated playing and one in a pink dress standing. Renoir completed three additional versions of this composition in oil for collectors; the Luxembourg version is now housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris,[2] the Robert Lehman Collection version is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,[3] while the Caillebotte version and one other are in private collections. An oil sketch of the composition is on display at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and a pastel sketch is in a private collection.[4] The painting in the Musée d'Orsay is 116 cm high and 90 cm wide. The version at the Met is 111.8 x 86.4 cm. The oil sketch at the Musée de l'Orangerie is 116.0 x 81.0 cm.[5]

Pissarro and Monet routinely painted series of variations on a single theme, but their works were intended to be shown together to chronicle the effects of light and atmosphere, while Renoir’s repetitions were independent essays in composition.[6] In particular, details and poses changed subtly, and the sketches eliminate most of the background elements.

Renoir explored a similar composition with his earlier 1888 work The Daughters of Catulle Mendès, now in the Annenberg Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In late 1891 or early 1892 Renoir was invited by the French government to execute a painting for a new museum in Paris, the Musée du Luxembourg, which was to be devoted to the work of living artists. He chose as his subject two girls at the piano. Aware of the intense scrutiny to which his submission would be subjected, Renoir lavished extraordinary care on this project, developing and refining the composition in a series of five canvases. The Lehman painting and the nearly identical version formerly in the collection of Renoir's fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte have long been regarded as the most accomplished variants of this intimate and engaging scene of bourgeois domestic life.

----------------------------
A lover of music like most Impressionists, Renoir often represented young girls at the piano. This subject, which stemmed from the gatherings of musician painters in the 17th and 18th century, can also be seen in the works of his contemporaries Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and Edgard Degas (1834-1917). Renoir thus takes on a classical theme, which combines the geometric lines of an upright piano with the undulating movements of the young girls. But he avoids inserting too much detail, in order to focus on the two female figures.
A young blonde-haired girl, seen in profile, is sight-reading from a score that she plays with her right hand. Beside her, a young brown-haired girl is leant over the piano, her eyes following the score. The picture may have been painted in Renoir's home, as he bought a piano for his wife as a wedding gift in 1890. At least six other versions of this painting exist. Perhaps Renoir had intended to paint a series like Claude Monet's (1840-1926) cathedrals?
Renoir doubtlessly used the same models as those pictured in Portrait de deux fillette [Portrait of Two Little Girls] at the Musée de l'Orangerie.

-----------------------------------
Created by Auguste Renoir, Two Young Girls at the Piano is an oil painting on canvas. It’s 44 x 34 inches and is part of the Robert Lehman collection.

Background
Around 1891 or 1892, Renoir was asked to create a painting for the Musee du Lexembourg museum in Paris by the French government. This museum was made for the work of living artists; so many historical pieces were stored there. Renoir chose the subject based on the domestic life of bourgeois.

Appearance
The scene in this piece depicts two young girls sitting at a piano and playing music. One blonde-haired girl is playing while holding the notes in front of her. The brunette girl is standing beside her chair looking at the notes with her. Both are in dresses and have long hair with bows tied in them. The background features a blue curtain with a cream colored wall. The piano is a dark brown wood and there is a vase with bright colored flowers sitting on top of it.

In this picture, Young Girls at the Piano, we have a detailed and felicitous account of the surroundings of French family life at the end of the nineteenth century, and yet it does not break down into a clutter of things asking for attention. We see the piano with its candle holders, the chairs, the tasseled draperies, and in the room beyond we get a glimpse of a stuffy but inviting confusion. We may study the costumes and the hairdos the girls wear, and on the piano is a typical "old-fashioned" bouquet of the time.

----------------------------------
This documentary character of Renoir's earlier work seldom conflicts with its qualities as art. The scene before us is bathed in a soft glow of light - its source and direction are not specific - and the rosy warmth helps us to join in the unself-conscious pleasure of the moment. This is a picture of leisure and relaxation and companionship. We feel this not only in the obvious indications of the subject, but more persuasively in the way the picture is put together.

The harsh, the rigid, and the angular are absent or suppressed; the gentle golden light that dilutes the colors brings them into the same family; and the ample forms that surround the girls seem to cushion and protect them. Yet Renoir here has given a surprising animation to a canvas that shows so little action. Our eyes are carried along sweeping lines and across forms that continue or stop one another. The foreground community of russet tones - the pillow on which the girl sits, the overstuffed chair with its music, and the piano - creates an arc moving to our right and toward the wall; the bodies of the girls lean forward in a similar but opposed arc; and this arc is restated in the drapery. The relation of the three arms and hands in the center of the canvas is a masterly variation on this theme. The girls, a lovely range of delicate pastel tints, are a beautifully organized group, typically Renoir in their vivacious postures and facial expressions. Also typically Renoir is the brilliant clustering of the heads and ornamental details at a point where many lines converge from above and below.

----------------------------
In the early 1890s, friends and admirers of Renoir took exception to the fact that the French State had never made any official purchase from the painter, then almost fifty years old. In 1892, Stéphane Mallarmé, who knew and admired the artist, helped by Roger Marx, a young member of the Beaux Arts administration and open to new trends, took steps to bring Impressionist works into the national museums. This was how, following an informal commission from the administration, Young Girls at the Piano was acquired and placed in the Musée du Luxembourg.

As well as this painting, where strong, supple drawing clearly defines the figures, while giving free rein to the lyricism of the palette, we know of three other finished versions using the same composition (one in the Metropolitan Museum de New York and the two others in private collections). There also exists a sketch in oils (Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie) and a pastel of the same size (private collection). The repetition of this motif shows Renoir's interest for a subject he had moreover already treated. We know that the painter was always dissatisfied and kept on reworking his paintings, but such a concentrated effort on one and the same composition remains unique. Maybe we should see in this his desire to provide the museums with a perfectly accomplished work. One can also not help thinking of the "series" that his friend Claude Monet was developing at the same time (Haystacks, 1891; Rouen Cathedral, 1892).

Recalling a classical theme that was very popular with French 18th century painters, notably Fragonard, Renoir sought to paint an ideal world, peopled with graceful young girls. But, scorning mere imitation, he also wanted to be a painter of his time, and presents us with an elegant, comfortably furnished, bourgeois interior.

Copyright Statement:
All the reproduction of any forms about this work unauthorized by Singing Palette including images, texts and so on will be deemed to be violating the Copyright Laws.
To cite this webpage, please link back here.

>> English Comments >> Chinese Comments >> French Comments >> German Comments >>Report

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Work Overview