Mademoiselle Dihau Playing the Piano

Seated at the piano, a young woman turns her head and looks back at us over her shoulder. The critic Paul Jamot thought her gaze almost matched Vermeer's girl in the blue turban.

The story behind the painting

The sitter is Marie Dihau, a singer and pianist and sister of the bassoonist Désiré Dihau, both friends of Degas. The French Wikipedia article says he painted the portrait between 1869 and 1872, while Wikidata gives 1869. The same article gives its size as 40.5 by 32.5 cm, while Wikidata lists 45 by 32.5 cm. The picture hung in the Dihau family salon beside the other Degas works they owned, including The Orchestra at the Opera, in which Désiré appears.

What to look for

Marie is shown half-length at the piano. Of her left hand we see only the wrist, resting on the keyboard. She turns her head toward the viewer, who stands behind her to the left, and her face stands out against the score on the music stand. She wears a black mantelet or shawl and a small white hat with black feathers, set on hair drawn back in strict bands behind the ear. The painting is restrained, almost severe, with all its attention on the face.

Meaning and intent

Paul Jamot wrote that in sober, almost stern painting he knew nothing superior, for science, truth and style, to this three-quarter face: the full modelling of the cheeks, the arc of the lips, the drawing of the eyes that look at us over the shoulder, almost with the gaze of Vermeer's girl in the blue turban. The pose catches a moment of interruption, as if someone had just entered the room while she played, and she turned to see who it was.

Legacy

After her brother died in 1909, Marie kept the painting in her modest flat on rue Victor-Massé, living on a small income and music lessons, often free, for young women of Montmartre. In 1923, wishing to keep it, she ceded it and The Orchestra to the Musée du Luxembourg while keeping the use of them for life. At a 1924 exhibition at the Galerie Petit, the two works, never shown publicly before, drew great enthusiasm. They entered the Louvre after her death in 1935 and the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.